The Monroe County Legislature approved the County budget last night.  Democrat Carmen Gamina joined all 15 Republicans in supporting the plan.

Monroe County Democrats showed that they learned absolutely nothing from the last election where they lost ground in an election they expected to make significant gains.

Thanks to the monroerising.com regular reader who sent us this first hand account of what happened Tuesday night.

Minority Leader Harry Bronson, the master of the obvious, pointed out that this budget “punts the ball down the field” and doesn’t address the long term problems or make the tough choices.  He then proceeded to offer no ideas or solutions of his own to deal with these problems.

Paul Haney, the Democrats fiscal “expert” went on and on and on.  He may have raised legitimate questions, but most in attendance were too busy considering puncturing their ear drums after the first 10 minutes of his speech.  He too brought up the fact that he was disappointed that the county didn’t address the long term issues the county faces.  Evidently, he has forgotten about the $42 million dollar deficit he hid from the public when he was finance director.  I wonder what Haney thinks about County Democrats not addressing their deficit issue when they were in charge.  I’m sure the county could sure use that $42 million right now.  Isn’t it funny how Haney and the Democrats forced Republicans to solve the Democrats’ financial problem while offering no solutions and still aren’t offering solutions now.  At least they’re consistent.

Bottom line, Legislator Haney is real good at pointing out problems (except when hiding Democrat deficits), but he comes up way short on offering any real solutions.

Legislatorette Carrie Andrews, who is sporting a darker hair color these days, asked a few questions about child care, and then suggested the county should consider using any additional funding for child care to expand eligibility or paying more money to day care providers.  So much for the interest of the tax payers.

Legislator Vince Esposito was the only Democrat to offer an amendment.  He would have been better to not have bothered.  He actually offered an amendment to cut $1.5 million out of the budget $1,000,000,000 because of lower than expected interest costs on a recent county borrowing.  I think that’s 1 thousandth of one percent — he’s been hanging around the folks in Albany too long if he really thinks that’s real tax relief.

Not to mention the lack of coordination on the Democratic messaging.  Esposito does this right before Haney rambles on about the lack of cash capital in the county budget. 

How is it that Carmen Gamina was the only member of that caucus to vote for the plan?  Is he the only one who actually got the message of the last election?  Thanks to the hypocrisy county Democrats showed last night, along with the antics of Albany Democrats and the national debate on ObamaCare, they have zero credibility with voters outside of the City of Rochester.

Keep up the good work.  Local Republicans need all the help they can get in tough times like this and local Democrats are giving it to them!