Here & There Column 7-6-10

Politicians Must Start Doing The Right Thing

Sullivan County Management is saying things are going to get financially difficult in the coming year and thrown in the mix is a proposed project for building a new county jail.....go ahead folks......figure this one out.
One just has to love when politicians start saying one thing and doing just the opposite.
But thrown in the middle of all the county's tough financial status is the totally evident mismanagement of our state's fiscal picture and there is no clear explanation of how they are going to get out of it.
One very evident factor is that this year's November elections are going to bring about massive changes as the folks are just plain fed up with incumbent politicians....and it doesn't matter if they are Republican or Democrats.
We are already seeing signs and hearing statements that read and say, "Lower Taxes", "Vote Out The Incumbent" , "Vote For Real Change".
Several years ago there was the formation locally of the Sullivan County Council of Governments which is an ad hoc group of county, town, village and school district officials, that would be responsible to taxpayers throughout the county.
The group brought up the subject on possibly consolidating services or if you will the merger of services.
Cutting costs and improving efficiency in services is a good thing and we suggested at the time that this movement should take it further then just justice courts, tax collection and public works as these moves would be just a drop in the bucket.
There were at that time floated suggestions of shelving a recommendation on the creation of the position of county executive and adding a 10th member to the county legislature.
Any movement on the 10th member suggestion apparently did not get much support and several members of the county legislature felt it might conflict with the full-time county manager's position and that fiscally Sullivan County could not afford something like this.
Any additional members to the county legislature would just be adding another layer of government...something taxpayers have had enough of.
We have said this many times that Sullivan County government must move in the direction of consolidating all the governments within the county instead of just the consolidation of services. This is tough because it could involve elimination of some of their jobs.....and well you know...... politicians really don't work too hard on this subject.
Ironically, while some talk about implementing programs to decentralize services, the impetus should be to merge governments so that we can see a leaner form of government that helps reduce taxes and improves the local economy.
Sullivan County, like many jurisdictions throughout New York State and the United States, struggle with serious fiscal stress as a combination of higher costs for existing services and reduced tax revenues, along with reduction of state aid produce budgetary shortfalls.
Politicians find this difficult to talk about and more so don't want to go up this ladder because it might mean the loss of their job, but, in the long run we cannot continue to face tax increases year in and year out.
New York State is one of the leaders in taxes and it's time voters put a stop to this and elect government representatives who will do something about this problem.
And this will happen in the upcoming November elections.