20 Years Later And Paul Haney’s Still Lying To The Public!
I have a confession. I’m really confused by the back and forth over the medicaid intercept. I think I understand the Republican position — they enacted the intercept because of the belief that medicaid cost will increase by more than the amount of growth the county would received in sales tax money.
Monroe County’s sales tax growth for the past 10 years is one of the lowest in the state. Maggie Brooks’ and the Republican majority’s decision makes sense. The Democrat and Chronicle had an article yesterday that confused most readers. I’m not being critical of the D&C (this time only) — the topic is very complex.
What I found absolutely fascinating was the following:
Republicans attacked Legislator Paul Haney, D-Rochester, who is the Democratic caucus’ chief fiscal expert, saying his financial expertise cannot be trusted.
(snip)
Haney, a former budget director under County Executive Tom Frey, could not be reached to comment.
“Instead of smearing another legislator, they should be admitting the intercept is costing taxpayers money,” said Minority Leader Harry Bronson, D-Rochester.
What?! Now I know why there’s such confusion. Haney is the Democrats’ chief fiscal expert? This is quite an admission on the part of Democrats and an indication of the sorry state of their caucus.
As Taxin’ Tom Frey’s budget director, Haney was a part of the team that raised property taxes by almost 35% and still left taxpayers holding the bag with a $40 million budget deficit that they intentionally “cooked the books” to hide that deficit from the public — 180% difference from the way Brooks has handled the current crisis. This is what prompted Majority Leader Dan Quatro to say:
“He’s either inept or he’s being disingenuous,” said Majority Leader Dan Quatro, R-Webster.
I’d vote for disingenuous. The current crisis is being caused by the same factors that led to Haney’s hidden deficit –structural problems in the county budget, namely medicaid cost growth outpacing the growth in county revenue.
And now the Democrats are relying on him as their “chief fiscal expert”? I’d trust Steven Eckel’s, Glenn Gamble’s, or Calvin Lee’s numbers before I trust Paul Haney’s calculations. Geesh, Carrie Andrews or Ted O’Brien could probably do a better job “crunching the numbers.”
I’d love to see someone in the Democratic caucus admit they appointed Haney their fiscal expert. Harry Bronson should be admitting that the Democrats in the County Legislature are in pretty rough shape and their data and research can’t be trusted.
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I’m going to say inept Cinci. Paul Haney knows that his past debacles when trying to figure out the finances of county government have put him on the hook for requiring acurate reporting on his part. He had to believe that he was cooking the numbers the right way this time. But, once again, Haney got it wrong.
One of two things happened here. Haney is either still incapable of conducting this type of work, or his legislative staff did very poor research for him and basically set him up for failure once again.
Either way, thank God the county democrats aren’t running the show right now. Thank God!