Maggie’s survey farce
There’s something truly awful about this: Maggie Brooks has put up a survey where readers can suggest ways to cut the county budget deficit.  Readers can check boxes like “Cut funding for Downtown Library and Library Central Services (Potential Savings: $7.8 million)”.
Luckily, we’re also allowed to make suggestions at the end. Â One reader has told me that he wrote:
Stop wasting money on frivolous lawsuits.
Kill Renaissance Square project.
Sounds pretty sensible to me. Why not stop by and add some suggestions of your own?
Does anyone else question the claim that 71% of budget is mandated spending? Where does the line cross between mandated provision of a service and mandated spending to provide that service?
Maybe some portion of that 71% is mandated spending and cannot be reduced, but I think there’s probably a lot of room to more efficiently provide mandated services. I’ve always suspected the claim that only 29% of the budget is under local control is misleading.
If anyone knows more about this mandated/non-mandated split, I’d love to hear it.
Good question. Hopefully someone around here will find the answer.
i believe you are correct to point out that it is mandated services and not necessarily mandated spending. and let us not forget that county government was put into place as an act of the nys legislature. so maggie herself is a form of mandated spending.
i mentioned stopping discriminatory lawsuits, ending tax breaks to companies that don’t create jobs and dissolving the water authority.
I followed your suggestion, went to the “survey” and added this:
Institute a “sin tax” on people at the library who use the internet connection for viewing pornography. If it’s such a big problem, we should be able to raise lots of money.
haha! that would probably work quite well.
Here’s mine (posted at county site):
Eliminate the Ren. Square project.
Consolidate more services with Rochester and the Towns.
Freeze department head salaries.
Tax all “adult” items and stores.
Require all elected officials to pay a portion of any health care benefits they choose to use.
I revised it a little (and submitted it again):
Eliminate the Ren. Square project.
Consolidate more services with Rochester and the Towns.
Freeze salaries of department heads and elected officials.
Require companies that do not come close to meeting COMIDA goals to repay the money.
Tax all “adult†items and stores.
Require all elected officials and ALL county employees not currently doing so to pay a portion of any health care benefits they choose to use.
Increase penalties for DWI - and include court costs.
I like the COMIDA suggestion especially.
Good to hear from you again, Lee.
What a horrible, biased survey! She doesn’t suggest her pet projects but rather stuff that she wants to see cut. Then she can say, “This is what the people want. I’m just doing as I’m told.” Sneaky!
Here’s what I submitted:
How about leveling the playing field on sales tax distribution. Homes in the Eastern Suburbs get higher amounts a sales tax returned based on higher home assessments. The problem is that many of these people spend their taxable dollars in and around Eastview Mall that’s outside of Monroe County.
So we give them more money from the sales tax pool even though they don’t contibute to it in the first place when the shop in Ontario County.
another comment:
How can you consider not funding the Libraries at the same time that you subsizing the Red Wings even though they are clearly running in the black? I have nothing against baseball but lets get real here.
we should organize a rally outside the county office building and make signs for each of the ideas (or just a popular few since there is certainly a theme) we came up with here. then maybe the media would pick up on some ideas not on the survey and maybe we can create a voice that way.
[...] has discussed this survey before. I believe it’s just a heavy-handed attempt to make people to buy into a sales tax increase, [...]