Rockland County Faces a Real Crisis

I am absolutely flabagastered at the recent attacks by the Scott Vanderhoef and his “acting” Finance guy, Steven De Groat, on the only vocal elected person I know who seems to be concerned about the huge deficit in the County, Legislator Ed Day. Chiming in of course are a bunch of Vanderhoef enablers Harriet Cornell and IIan Schoenberger, career politicians in the Legislature both of whose families seem to be living off the largesse of Rockland taxpayers.

No wonder they want to keep the status quo and inject politics when they have done ZERO to curb this out of control spending EVEN NOW while we are in crisis.  They have put in place ZERO spending cuts and apparently ZERO thought into controlling the spending instead concentrating on borrowing $80 Million to cover up their mismanagement.

Keep in mind that they already borrowed $18 Million last year to cover a portion of the deficit and now apparently are adding that amount back to arrive at the $80 Million number which Day and others contend, and I agree, is really $62 Million. 

Of all things, the “acting” Finance Director, is accusing Mr. Day of playing politics while he and his boss have been playing around preparing phony budgets spending like drunken sailors. Many of Vanderhoefs budgets were based on outlandish projections of sales tax and mortgage tax income and inserting for a few years in a row millions of dollars of income from Red Light Camera Ticketing while knowing full well that the installation of these cameras is not permitted by NYS since we do not have one million residents.

These phony budgets and  out of control spending will result in a tax increase of over 30%, 15 times the 2% tax cap required by Governor Cuomo. And that’s not all. Sales taxes will also increase along with Day seems to be the only one concerned and the wagons are being circled around this man who has contributed more of his personal time improving the lives of citizens and has no vested interest other than the benefit of taxpayers since Mr. Day is the only member of his family on the payroll in Rockland. He even gave up his pension rights.

So who are you going to listen to? The people who got us into this mess or someone who has worked in management positions in the NYPD, has drawn budgets and who has had and exemplary career in law enforcement with two sons who served with one still serving in the military fighting to keep this Country safe?  I say this because it is a testament to the character of Edwin Day and his family. Day is facing a battle against career politicians and needs the support of Rocklanders. He is the only one brave enough to speak out on this crisis.

This is not a conversation about $62 Million or $80 Million, which is where Vanderhoef and Cornell would like to keep it, it is a conversation about how we deal with the out of control spending (Rockland employees still have no co-pays on their medical care) and the apparent inability of the current crowd of elected officials to deal with this crisis.