Who Would Have Believed This About Erie County?

[rob on the job]

This surprised the hell out of me. In fact, I'm not even sure it's true.

EXCERPT:
Erie County government spends the least per capita and has the smallest county work force, relatively, among the 12 largest counties in New York State, a top member of the county administration has concluded.

In a letter to the Erie County Legislature, James M. Hartman, director of management initiatives, also pointed out that Erie County spends the second-largest percentage of its budget on mandated Medicaid, behind only Monroe County.

Hartman's figures, based on 2006 county budgets, also claim that Erie has the second-lowest local revenue per capita, ahead of only Niagara County.

In a report that's expected to draw some fireworks from critics of the county's budget practices, Hartman, a former county comptroller, emphasized that he was presenting these figures to inform the public.

"There is no policy inference," he wrote in a letter to Legislature Chairwoman Lynn M. Marinelli, adding that the administration of County Executive Joel A. Giambra plans to rely on management efficiencies rather than tax increases to balance the budget.

"However," he wrote, "we should recognize that by comparison to the other major New York counties, we are a relatively low-cost, low-tax government operation."

MORE

link: http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060511/1005642.asp

[nehemiah]

it the southtowns that are a drain on NY's economy.

:D

[CoachC.]

it the southtowns that are a drain on NY's economy.

:D

Must be all the snow plowing :bigsmile:

[TigerJ]

The old adage comes through again! "It's the economy, stupid." I don't think the county government and Joel Giambra don't get off scot free when it comes to Erie Co.'s problems, but they are not the root cause. It think the governments of Buffalo and Erie County over the past 40+ years have more to do with it than the present administration. They have more to do with the present economy. It's not all on them either, but if one wants to start pointing fingers, that might be where to start.

[BillyT92679]

I think, ultimately, it was an intractable attitude among many in Upstate NY, including politicians and short-sighted voters themselves who kept trying to maintain heavy industry long after that business died off. Any push toward a service economy is met with bureaucratic hangups, code regulations, and taxation. Any new and innovative ideas are defeated by arcane rules which require like 18 million different contractors to get developments built.

[mark3274]

hopefully monroe county is about to be slapped in the face when the legislature rejects it's sales tax hike. then monroe county will be forced to do what should have been done years ago hand out layoff notices to a bloated county workforce.

[Mouldsie]

no no no no

I used to have the data to back me up but Erie Country employs way too many people. We also have the first or second highest paid county workers in the nation.

[Mouldsie]

http://www.onebuffalo.com/CityComp.asp

the pdf is good too

[BillyT92679]

What's scary is that Erie County is, even in economically destitute UNY, the only county that has seen major SUBURBAN population decline over the past five years.

Even Oneida County (Utica-Rome) had a slight uptick in growth in the past five years in growth outside of the cities of Utica and Rome, though the county overall lost population. Monroe County's populated areas outside of Rochester and Onondaga County's outside of Syracuse grew as well, though virtually no major county grew at all in population.

Buffalo dropped about 10 thousand people from 2000-2004 (estimate another couple thousand by 2005). But the suburbs of Erie County ALSO lost about eight thousand people in the past five years too. That's really serious because even when this area lost a ton of population, the suburbs continued to grow, just not at a rate that equalled the loss out of Buffalo. If both the city and the burbs continue to shrink, Erie County could be as low as 910,000 by 2010. That's over 200,000 fewer people than 1970.