Kantrowitz Concedes Election as Results certified (51% to 49%)
The election results are final and the election is now over. WIth 5,698 votes cast I was 117 votes short. I have already congratulated Lon Hofstein on his victory, and wished him good luck in January when he begins serving the remaining one year of now County Executive Ed Day’s unexpired term.
It has been an honor to serve in county government this year. It has been an eye-opening experience. Over the remaining 6 weeks I will continue to work towards improving Rockland by voting to pass a responsible, well thought out, balanced budget while keeping any tax increase at or below the 2% tax cap. The budget the Legislature received from the County Executive, by his own admission, reflects a “last minute 11th hour attempt” to cut $10 million dollars to comply with a “surprise” 2012 law that ironically, the County Executive himself voted for. That 2012 law was no surprise to anyone, and the proclamation that the proposed budget was not “political” is an insult to the intelligence of the public and everyone else in government. The 2012 Deficit Reduction Act was passed before the deficit financing bonds were issued, and for months this year the legislature asked the administration to discuss the plans for revising the law to take those bonds into consideration. Even the Commissioner of Finance recently acknowledged that it would be prudent to amend the law to provide for the balance of the deficit to be paid off over the life of the bonds. The sky is not falling in Rockland. Our County Executive continues to talk about the crisis and disaster heading our way, but his Finance Commissioner, a very reputable and honorable person, tells a completely different story. Governing through fear and divisiveness never works over the long term. People must start paying closer attention. Ed Day is taking credit for the improvements in Rockland, but all of the fiscal improvements came from the Legislature’s work in the past few years’ budgets. Budgets that Ed Day voted against!
This budget is all about politics. It is about hurting an independently elected Sheriff so the County Executive can run his own hand-picked candidate against him next year. It is about cutting 100% of the non-profits so the CE doesn’t have to address the inefficiencies within his own administration. It is about shifting the burden of creating a responsible budget to the 17 legislators who only have a few weeks (not 10 months) to review thousands of line items and then take the political brunt of making truly sensible decisions. All 17 legislators are up for election next year and there will be a slate of CE “hand-picked” candidates to run against them. The CE budget is all about putting politics before people. The CE’s recent back pedaling that it’s not what he wanted to do, and it’s somehow now negotiable is just nonsense. The CE hasn’t even had a representative show up at the most important budget review sessions conducted over recent weeks.
Rockland needs economic development more than anything else. We need to attract young families and robust businesses. The selection of our “Economic Development Director” could have been a prime example of the future of Rockland, but instead of a highly qualified individual, the County Executive did exactly what he promised he would never do- put politics over people. He appointed the unsuccessful Preserve Party candidate for Spring Valley Mayor to the position. Political patronage over everything else. How does that look to businesses interested in coming to Rockland?
A good budget is a reflection of what is important. Just as families must decide how best to spend their money, government must allocate its resources intelligently and purposefully to accomplish necessary goals. Paying down debt is certainly important and fiscally sound, but no family would pre-pay its mortgage with money needed to operate the family business and thereby lose the business income needed to survive. No family would pay down more debt than required if it meant that the family would be so short of cash it couldn’t feed itself.
Planning a budget is a tedious and difficult process that requires cuts with a scalpel, not a hatchet. Improving the efficiency of government operations was a campaign promise from the new County Executive, but his budget reflects the exact opposite. Instead of looking within his own offices and departments, the CE cut the independently elected Sheriff’s budget and then turned his axe to the non-profit contract agencies. Our county’s non-profits serve the most needy and poorest members of our community in a cost effective and efficient manner. Government is not capable of providing the services that the non-profits do for anywhere close to the financial support that the government provides those agencies. For an investment of $3.2 million in non-profits, the county gets back many times that in benefits.
Cutting non-profits is a lose-lose proposition in the worst way. The large number of jobs, the revenues, the local spending and the services that local non-profits contribute to the county economy have been outlined in detail elsewhere. The net financial loss to the county from cutting $3.2 million in support to non-profits is a huge multiple of that small savings. It simply makes no sense. Imagine young families looking to settle in Rockland and finding out that we chose to eliminate Big Brothers Big Sisters, Hospice, VCS, The Center for Safety and Change, Rockland Center for the Arts and countless other agencies that improve the quality of life in Rockland. We can’t afford to support these agencies in our community? Really? That is our message?
Likewise, cutting 37 Sheriff’s deputies and expecting the towns and villages to pick up the slack borders on absurdity. That is just tax shifting, not tax saving. The independent report prepared behind the Sheriff’s back calls for increasing the responsibility of the Sheriff’s Patrol not cutting it out. The cost to the towns to pick up the slack is far more than the cost to the county of maintaining the services. The cuts result in the loss of the shared services that almost every town relies upon i.e. BCI, Bomb Squad, SWAT, Arson Investigation etc. While the CE announced that he had the support of the Police Chiefs and Town Supervisors, that simply was not true. Again, politics over people. The Sheriff had the CE’s word that his budget was going to be approved as finally submitted, but then it wasn’t.
The salt in the wound was the substantial salary increases to the CE’s media relations and intergovernmental appointees in his inner circle, and a new $98,000 per year job for more media relations in the MIS department. The CE already governs via Facebook—Is spending more money on getting his political message out on social media the best use of county funds? Is that a better use of funds than feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless and protecting our community?
Planning a budget requires making not just hard decisions, but smart decisions. Rockland deserves better than an 11th hour hatchet job. Rockland deserves better than politics over people. Wake up people! Start holding the County Executive accountable, and stop drinking the “kool-aide.“ The CE now has one more legislature “locked up vote” in Mr. Hofstein next year. That is the campaign they openly ran; Ed Day wanted “his seat back,” and it worked. But you the people still have a voice—one that must be heard loud and clear. Don’t let a vocal minority with several facebook pages and social media outlets tell you what is best for our County. You deserve better. I am only 1 of 17, and I am only here until December 31, but I will still work to make Rockland County the great place I know it can be.
Sincerely,
Barry Kantrowitz
Posted on 12 Nov 2014, 20:51 - Category: In The News
