Democratic Legislators Call Astorino Penny-Wise/Pound Foolish, Call for Program Restoration
At a press conference March 14, Democratic members of the County Board of Legislators called on County Executive Rob Astorino and other members of the BOL to join them in putting funding back into the county’s 2013 budget for what they called essential services.
Referring to the severe homeless problem several decades ago when the county, at great expense to the tax-paying population, housed families in hotels, BOL majority leader Pete Harckham (D-Katonah) said the programs put into place to fill those gaps and create a security net are now in jeopardy.
“County government is the safety net. It is not our towns. It is not our faith-based organizations. It is county government,” Harckham said, referring to eviction and foreclosure prevention programs, nutrition assistance programs and child care funding, which have all been cut in the 2013 county budget.
Harckham along with several colleagues presented several charts with data showing the rise in need and decrease in funding over the past four years.
Calling them disturbing trends, Harckham said: “The parent share of child care is up over 164 percent in real dollars. Title XX has been cut by 88 percent. Our homeless families are up 40 percent and request for food assistance is up 53 percent.”
“These cuts have been penny-wise and pound foolish,” he continued. “We call on the county executive and the nine legislators that voted to further cut these programs to dialog on how to restore them to previous levels.”
Citing the 164 percent increase in parent child care contribution since 2009, Alfreda Williams (D, Greenburgh) asked if anyone’s income had increased by that amount in the past four years.
Bill Ryan (D, White Plains) said: “What is best for the county is a stronger middle class. We don’t want parents to drop out of the workforce because they can’t afford child care. We need to keep them employed and build into the entire system a parental share that for them is affordable.”
“This is not brain surgery here. This is not high-level science, we know in Westchester County like in all of America we’ve had some tough economic times,” Judith Myers (D, Larchmont) said, referring to the 40 percent increase in homeless families in the county since 2009.
“With the increasing threat of foreclosures we realized as county government that we needed to put money back into eviction prevention because it is far cheaper, far more effective to put money into preventing homelessness than it is to take care of homeless families after they have been evicted from their homes,” Myers added. “It is reverse logic that this funding should be cut.”
The number of Westchester residents in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, has increased by 53 percent since 2009 according to the BOL data.
“There were 52,791 individuals in Westchester County receiving food stamps in 2009. In 2013 the projected number of individuals receiving food assistance will be 80,935. That is 28,144 more people in the county receiving food stamps,” said MaryJane Shimsky (D, Hastings-on-Hudson).
Shimsky further noted that the Food Bank of Westchester is slated to get no funding from the county in 2013 and Westchester Coalition for the Hungry and Homeless also would not receive the $72,000 it had last year. A press release issued by the coalition later on the same day as the BOL press conference, however, indicated they had been told by Astorino their $72,000 would actually be funded in 2013.
Shimsky reported that the food pantries are seeing their demand soar and one of the “most chilling” trends is that people who used to volunteer at the food pantries are now in line seeking their help, and there’s less food on the shelves. “The bulk of the people going to our shelters and food pantries used to be single men. We are now seeing children and senior citizens on the lines. We are now at a point where members of the middle class are not able to feed themselves,” she said. “This is not just a moral issue, it is also an economic one. If people can’t eat, they don’t do well in school. If they don’t have food and slide into destitution and malnutrition, how is our economy going to recover?”
Catherine Borgia (D, Ossining) summed it up by saying the numbers speak for themselves and there are real consequences for the policy decisions being made. “We believe that although there is a moral imperative to take care of the neediest in our society, there are also significant economic impacts associated with these decisions,” she claimed. “We’ve known that the investment in child care dollars leads to savings down the road in other types of government sponsored programs. It also means that when there is an increase in the parent share and a reduction in child care that children are placed in harm.”
With an overall goal to keep the working poor working, Harckham said it would take about $10 million from a $1.6 billion budget to repair the safety net.
Myers added that while these program cuts were made, the budget itself was not cut, so no money was actually saved. “It is the way you manage your budget that is just as important as what your budget is. And this hijacked budget is not a very smart budget at all, she concluded.”
