River News: Our View

Let’s start right off the bat by saying that Oneida County’s highway department staff does a terrific job.

They do so under sometimes harsh weather conditions, which goes with the territory. They also labor under sometimes less than adequate working conditions, thanks to a facility that is way past its prime. That is not part of the job and isn’t what they signed up for.

To hear the current crop of county board supervisors tell it — with a few notable exceptions — this is because past county boards were not progressive enough, or forward-thinking enough. They should have built a new highway facility a decade ago when it would have been so much cheaper. 

Now, in their infinite wisdom, they say it’s time for some spending gone wild, you know, bucket loads of million-dollar bills to make up for lost time.

Baloney. The spectacle at the Oneida County board meeting this past week was one of the most shameful on record, and that’s saying something. In short, we were told, the highway department is at crisis stage — it’s going to fall down tomorrow! — and we need to tax and spend millions and millions of dollars. Right away!

Hopefully everybody sees through the ruse, which is occurring right on schedule, especially highway department workers. The next time highway department workers are laboring away in a facility that isn’t adequate — that would be their next work day — they should blame the people who are actually responsible for that. 

That would not be this newspaper and others who opposed that new facility a decade ago. It would not be the supervisors then who understood it was all a big government ploy to milk taxpayers, and who stopped it from happening. Back then, they were accused of being parsimonious to public detriment; in reality they were reasonable to public benefit. And it would not be taxpayers who rightfully resisted mad-hatter tax-and-spenders in county government.

The people to blame are the very elected officials who are raising their voices to the rafters now that something needs to be done. It’s the very same elected officials who claim to be their friends, at least those who have been on the county board beyond the last several terms. 

With friends like these people, highway department workers don’t need enemies.

Let’s start with a few observations and then get to the reason why county board supervisors are to blame, why they should not be trusted, and why, if taxpayers aren’t careful, they are going to be suckered into a gigantic tax increase.

First, nixing a new facility 10 years ago was absolutely the right thing to do. This week we heard multiple supervisors saying the county should have acted then, but the county did the right thing by refusing to build an exorbitant facility when a consulting study showed that more reasonable options were available through upgrades and renovations.

Since then, as county board chairman Scott Holewinski pointed out Tuesday, the county has spent more than $2 million on the current facility. Perhaps more could have been done, but there are two reasons why that hasn’t resulted in a ship-shape facility.

The first is that, as supervisor Connor Showalter pointed out, the renovation options were projected to last 20-30 years and we are now 10 years into that timeline. So we are anywhere from one-third to one-half through the extension of the facility’s lifespan; the wear and tear is normal. It’s not that the renovation route was the wrong way to go, it’s just that time flies and we are way down the road.

Second, if there has been neglect and more could have been done, that is squarely on the shoulders of supervisors, and especially on supervisors on the public works committee. If that’s the case, why haven’t they pursued a more aggressive approach to securing funds for capital improvement projects?

As Holewinski pointed out on the county board floor, very few capital improvement projects (CIP) proposed by the highway department have been turned down — an assessment that supervisor Billy Fried, who plays an integral role in the county’s CIP process, agreed with.

The truth is, obdurate public works supervisors have been sitting on their hands. They wait and wait and then, every few years, they spring massive spending propositions on the board, with a sky-is-falling pitch. That’s exactly what we heard Tuesday. This year it was supervisor Mike Timmons’s turn to cry wolf, but the usual suspects are always lurking in the weeds nearby. 

Holewinski had it exactly right, and supervisor Steven Schreier alluded to it as well: The highway department and its committee of jurisdiction, the public works committee, should list and prioritize the renovation needs for that facility and put those needs through the county’s CIP process, just like everybody else.

And if — and it’s a big if — a new facility is needed, that should go through the CIP process, too. Why should the highway department get special treatment? If a new facility is actually needed, then it will survive a competitive process.

What is the public works committee afraid of, besides the truth?

Instead, now the executive committee is going to take up highway facility priorities as a special category, with monthly reports to the board. Let us translate what this means for taxpayers, using our crystal ball. They are getting ready to gin up a massive tax increase, and they intend to get it one way or another. If voters don’t approve it through referendum — and they shouldn’t — they will borrow the money and tax you that way.

We don’t even need a crystal ball because supervisor Billy Fried said it bluntly Tuesday: “And the concern you’ll hear probably next month when we talk about the budget is, as we use money from the general fund, it’s been noticeable over the last three years how our balance is going down and understanding what’s out there for the future, not just for highways.”

What he said is true, but it misses context, which Holewinski added Tuesday — namely, when the county paid off its last big debt for the law enforcement center, it kept the levy on the tax rolls, to the tune of about $2 million a year. In other words, the county overtaxed us by millions year after year and, as Holewinski said, that’s why the general fund balance has been so big. The general fund balance should be going down; that’s not a bug or a crisis but a long-overdue fix.

Then Fried went on to explain that the poor county budget, what with all these needs, just won’t be sustainable over the next five to 10 years, so they have given the “finance director permission to seek funding options such as bonding.”

“The downside of it is, it means we need to tax our constituents more to get that type of funding, but that will all be spelled out for you,” Fried said.

So there it is. It will all be spelled out for us. They are going to tax us because, for all these years, past boards have been irresponsible by not taxing us then for expensive projects. They will spell it out in dramatic detail, just like they did Tuesday. To cite one example, supervisor Mike Timmons let it be known that we were “one disaster away from having nothing.”

Nothing! 

Supervisor Dan Hess lamented that our shabby highway department can’t compare to other counties, which have new and brighter facilities in all their royal majesty. Just go look for yourselves, he drooled.

He’s right, and we think that’s exactly what taxpayers should do when they are out and about around the state, especially in poorer and more rural areas. Drive around and look at all those shiny, gleaming new government buildings that counties always manage to find money to build, and then drive around neighborhoods in those county seats and look at all the poverty and run-down housing surrounding those government palaces.

Often enough, the government buildings are the only ones that are in reasonable shape. Their citizens need help. But where is their government? Where are their elected officials? They are scheming to build new highway departments, that’s where they are. They are with Dan Hess, all green with envy. 

Meanwhile, the people should be red with anger at what these elected officials have done to them, and continue to do to them, and they should express that anger at the ballot box in future elections.

All of which brings us back to the original point. It could well be that a new facility can be justified, and it is likely that at the very least major renovations are needed.

But just whose fault is it that things have so deteriorated? It starts with the public works committee that somehow manages to sit on its hands, pretty much dodges the CIP process, and then barges onto the county board floor with a wild spending resolution.

As even supervisor Steven Schreier said, Tuesday’s resolution would have endorsed some specific projects but it also managed to say the spending would include but not be limited to those projects.

In other words, they could spend and spend and spend, for virtually anything. That’s so big government.

More to the point, though, the people who are to blame — many of them sitting on this current board — are the supervisors who say every year that spending needs to be cut, that superfluous programs need to go away, and then never do one thing to actually make that happen.

If county government kept to its core missions — law enforcement, highways, social and human services — there would be plenty of money for those core services, including highways and highway facilities, and the county could cut taxes, too.

There would be good roads. There would be a safe and drug-free county. There would be needed services for vulnerable populations, especially families and children at risk. There would be a thriving economy if the county and the state would get out of the way.

And there would be a good highway department. So, highway workers, the reason you have to work in unacceptable facilities is because supervisors haven’t cut unnecessary spending elsewhere. They have refused to put their money where their mouth is.

If the county wants to dramatize its needs, try focusing on the needs of the poorer among us and those with mental health needs. The solutions are within all of your grasps, all you have to do is cut out the special interests, eliminate their subsidies, cut unnecessary programs, and listen to your constituents.

In the meantime, don’t come crying about how good a new sparkly garage would make us feel. That’s offensive.

Tuesday demonstrated that the more things change the more they stay the same. The dishonest jackals just keep on baiting and bleeding us. They talk a good game, but it’s all a con.

Don’t trust them. Ever.