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September 5, 2010

EDITORIAL: Budget pain has hit home

Press-Republican

Gov. David Paterson last year predicted confounding decisions and painful consequences in facing the recession, and he was so right. He was probably talking about the state's efforts to craft a budget. But the pain has also been intense locally.

It was entirely understandable that, when he ordered correctional facilities and state parks closed, he'd hear an uproar from the areas directly affected. New York state is big enough that residents of one locale could fight for their own institutions with confidence that cuts could be found elsewhere. Cut them, not me. It was predictable.

Now, the pain of governance is leaking down to the local level, where the options are not so numerous. As counties, cities, towns and villages wrestle with their own budgets, they're finding they have very few items where cuts can be made without severely damaging their communities.

Plattsburgh Mayor Donald Kasprzak has had to defend a number of unpopular budget initiatives, explaining he's had to keep the majority of the city's taxpayers in the forefront of his thinking. It is to those residents that he owes his first allegiance, even if it has to come at the expense of a particular sub-group.

Essex County finds itself in the same mess, and, unfortunately for County Manager Daniel Palmer, he seems to be the public face of the controversial solutions.

He explained to the Board of Supervisors recently that the Crown Point Fish Hatchery is an obvious candidate for closure to save county taxpayers some of the pain to which the governor alluded. Closing the hatchery, Palmer specified, would eliminate three jobs and obviate $500,000 worth of overdue rehab on the site.

Crown Point Supervisor Bethany Kosmider's responsibility is to her town, as well as the county taxpayers. If she doesn't speak up to try to save the hatchery, she will be neglecting the people who put her into office, just as representatives of counties and Assembly and Senate districts would be seen if they didn't defend their areas against the governor's proposed closures.

Kosmider noted that the hatchery provides thousands of adult fish that are magnets for tourists aiming to catch them. Without those fish, the entire county would suffer from the absence of those tourists, who bring in much more in sales tax than would be saved by closing the hatchery.

Palmer and the county are also immersed in the problem of what to do about the Horace Nye Nursing Home, a service many county residents appreciate but at an annual loss to taxpayers of about $2 million. Lease or sell the home, and they'll have irate employees on their hands, to say nothing of families of patients there; leave it alone, and they'll have many more resentful taxpayers.

These kinds of decisions exceed conventional wisdom. We were told they were coming, and now they're here.

We urge everyone to see the other side in these debates and to accept that, in this crisis, there may be more losers than winners.

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