Naivety has met with reality!

Monroe County Council President Sophia Travis and company have requested that all of the County departments cut their 2007 budgets by 5%, which on the surface seems like a reasonable request. However simplistic this approach may be it doesn’t bode well when these same individuals threw caution to wind when they pumped tens of thousands of dollars into numerous social service agencies in the 2006 budget. The result of that action has been a budget plagued with deficits and shortfalls nearly from its inception as the accounts have been balanced with funds from the County’s cash reserves. The county has been in what some have called a financial funk since the Democrats took control in January of 2005. Council member Trent Jones coined it a “rudderless ship waiting for the captain to arrive” and Monroe County Prosecutor Carl Salzmann likened it to being on a “submarine with screens for windows”. Sandy Newman the County Auditor has been on an eighteen-month learning curve with little or no progress being made, as the Council still does not have adequate supporting data to consider the budget much less decide on one. Throughout the 2006 budget hearing process Newman didn’t have a clue what was going on and this was evident when she towed the party line with her support for spending down the County’s cash reserves to fund all of the additional social service initiatives.

Interesting enough one of Council President Travis’ comments to trim some of the fat from the County’s budget included taking a close look at the possibility of eliminating duplication of county services which Township Trustees were mentioned. The reason this is so interesting is in the summer of 2004 when the Republicans controlled the Council a fact finding meeting was held in the Council chambers that addressed this very issue and it caused quite a fury among the likes of Bloomington Township Trustee and fellow Democrats Nancy Brinegar and her husband Jim which is the Township’s Assessor. Their vocal opposition to the concept sent a message that was loud and clear, don’t mess with my gravy train! Now fellow Democrat Travis has stepped onto this slippery slope and it appears as if she is going to take on the cause as if it were an original idea. Who said that politics is boring?

Another idea that surfaced recently from this brain trust was “you’re just going to have to find a way to use less fuel”. Wow, now there’s an original idea if one was ever uttered! Isn’t it a real shame when those little logistical nuances like fuel for the County’s vehicle fleet gets in the way of funding for our community's indigent population? Isn’t it just a real drag when you have to provide those pesky services like police and fire protection for public safety over socialized medicine? It’s a real shame that everybody doesn’t understand how much better the world would be if people didn’t have to work and everything was free for the taking. This is just another prime example of where naivety has met with reality and unfortunately we are all caught in its vortex. Maybe we should all take a look at the County’s budget through a pair of kaleidoscope looking glasses and we too could see things more clearly but then we would all be Democrats wouldn’t we?