Published in the Press and Sun-Bulletin, 10/25/2020, p. A12
At a recent public hearing on the Broome County budget, person after person protested cuts in the public health budget. The director of the Broome County Health Department, Rebecca Kaufman, replied that no one was let go.
Where is the truth? The answer tells us much about why Broome County was so ill-prepared for COVID-19 — and the next viral emergency headed our way.
The numbers in the proposed budget are stark: three public nurses in maternal and child health are zeroed out on page 234; the three directors of the STD/HIV/TB/Maternal Child clinics are gone (pp. 226, 234), and eight positions are to be removed in the Clinic and Infectious Disease division (p. 226). It is true that many of these positions were left vacant in the last few years and are to be “abolished in 2021.”
That’s little comfort. For this year testifies to a dismaying trend: clinic and disease control staffing, so badly needed now, is half of what it was five years ago. Maternal and child health has been cut 10%. The mental health division has gone from 55 staff positions in 2010 to seven in 2015 to but three today; funding is down 75%. There’s not much help to treat the explosion of COVID-related mental illness.
This isn’t a problem of lack of resources. It’s legislators’ priorities. While public health was being defunded, county officials went on a mass incarceration spending spree. Crime rates have dropped, and the county jail is half empty, but jail staff has increased by 25 in the last 10 years (to 194), with half of that coming in the last four years. Jail funding has increased by 50% to over $30 million. Five more staff were added to the sheriff ’s road patrol force recently, with two more proposed for 2021. The District Attorney’s Office has grown from 31 to 45 positions since 2017, with two more to be added nest year.
Is it any surprise that when COVID-19 hit the county, we had no plan, few staff and fewer resources? Or that many of those with substance use and mental health problems were not in treatment centers but in the county jail? The result: The jail became quickly a COVID hotspot. Since the H1N1 and SARS epidemics, a state law requires all counties to have an emergency plan that covers crowded nursing homes, college dorms and jails. Other counties post theirs on their websites. Broome County’s website has a two-page flyer last updated in 2008.
We can do better. We need to fund public health. It is not by chance that Broome County has the highest incarceration rate of all 62 counties in the state, and also ranks 52nd of the 62 counties on health and wellbeing measures. It is time to shift the county’s priorities away from armored cars and expensive, empty jails to well-stocked and well-funded health facilities.
Bill Martin is a Binghamton University professor and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier.
Its a miracle budget for Broome County. Following a hiring freeze and furloughs earlier in the summer due to COVID-19, the County Executive Jason Garnar has just announced only minor budget adjustments for the coming year.[i] How has the county offset plummeting revenues from falling sales taxes, closed casinos and restaurants, and empty hotels? Garnar says he will tap the reserve fund he has built up and take on short-term debt. Surprisingly, there was even good news: a cut in property taxes for the third straight year. And hope remains for federal aid. By all official accounts there are no serious cuts in county services.
Garnar’s announcement, however, is deceptive and far too reassuring. Dig a little beneath the surface and you find a savage budget that deepens long-term cuts to public health services and funds more incarceration and policing. It threatens to push many county residents into further debt, destitution, homelessness, and medical crises. The budget certainly does not provide the resources we need to fight COVID-19.
Defunding Public Health
Hiring freezes and furloughs sound reasonable when facing the loss of $ millions in county revenues. But who was furloughed? We weren’t told. What positions aren’t being filled? We weren’t told. What are the county’s priorities under COVID? We don’t know.
It took a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the county personnel department to find out.[i] County employees working in public health and social services were the clear targets. Of the 57 positions the County Executive furloughed:
26 were in the health and social services departments (e.g. Medicaid and food stamp (SNAP) support)
14 were in the departments of public works and public transit
2 were in the already thinly staffed county library
Not a single person was listed among the hundreds employed by the Sheriff (with a half empty jail?) or the recently expanded District Attorney’s office (with falling crime and closed courts?). No one with administrative or legislative duties was listed.
A quick skim of the proposed 2021 budget reveals the advancement of these priority choices:
public health sees 8 positions abolished this year in the Clinic and Disease Division — i.e., those assigned to monitor and address infectious diseases (during COVID times?)
3 public nurses are eliminated in Maternal and Child health
all the Directors of the STD/HIV, TB, and Maternal Child Health have been swept away.
This continues long term trends in cutting health services, year after year.[iii] Mental health has been particularly hard hit.
Funding Policing and Incarceration
What new positions are being funded? More employees for the Sheriff. In the last 5 years the county has added 25 new correctional officers (194 total staff). It costs $80,000+ on average for jail staff, with some COs earning $110,000+. And with only 300 local residents regularly in the jail (and only 35 convicted persons in total), the Sheriff has been spending $2 million or more a year on overtime. It’s a puzzle. In just five years the County has added $7 million to the jail budget alone, continuing a long trend.
The same pattern holds for the Sheriff’s law enforcement department, which supplements our already large city, university, and state police forces. In the last five years the county has added 6 new officers to reach a total force of 71 before this year’s new additions. This isn’t cheap: each new officer costs $114,000 or more per year. Meanwhile the county has been adding $200,000+ each year for new vehicles, $300,000 for overtime, $700,000 for a new garage, and many hidden items from $25-40,000 for dry cleaning wash-n-wear uniforms to the costs of stocking up and maintaining old and unused US military vehicles.
COVID-19 failures
These defunding and funding patterns endanger us. They certainly left the county woefully unprepared for COVID-19. We continue to spend tens of millions of dollars on arresting, prosecuting, and jailing thousands of persons for non-violent misdemeanors, particularly Black and Latinx residents.[iv] Headed into the ninth month of the epidemic we still find ourselves unable to provide PPE and tests for use in our clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, and the county’s big jail. The result has been repetitive “hotspots”[v] and now a yellow-zone alert and a looming shutdown.
October 6th: Governor Cuomo’s Yellow Hot Zone
This is particularly the case for the jail, where we were told on May 4th that there were no more cases,[vi] yet a later FOIA request and reports from inside reveal continuing positive tests among staff and inmates.[vii]
Meanwhile the City of Binghamton has finally introduced a testing site, but it uses rapid antigen tests that generate many false positives.[viii] SUNY-Binghamton students and staff, returning in the tens of thousands, are little better served. In contrast to Cornell and other universities where testing of students is frequent, available to all, and often mandatory, testing at SUNY-Binghamton is only allowed for a small fraction of the student body. Have you been exposed to a fellow student with COVID in an in-person classroom? You cannot make an appointment for a test, and the teachers and students in the class are not told of their exposure—contrary to what is done at even nearby SUNY colleges. The fear in student voices is palpable and justified.
Preparing for COVID-20
June 7, 2020 Community Rally for Budget Reform
The fears and dilemmas we face reflect past county decisions. Federal, state, and county authorities have all confronted viral epidemics for decades, most recently the 2002 SARS and 2009 H1N1 epidemics. In their wake public health authorities began to plan on how to handle new outbreaks, especially in crowded nursing homes, colleges, and prisons. And laws were passed requiring this: every year, every county in the state has to provide the governor with an emergency services plan that includes planning for viral pandemics. Many counties have been posting theirs on their county websites.[ix] Broome County, however, has only a two-page flyer last updated in 2008.[x] Meanwhile the county has been cutting public health positions to ensure the lack of preparedness. What will happen with the next wave of COVID 19, or some years down the road when the next epidemic predictably appears?
This year’s county budget is the result of years of defunding public health and social services and funding mass incarceration and policing. Public protests across the county have marshaled hundreds and thousands calling for a rethink of what constitutes public safety, of what meets community needs. It’s time for legislators to listen to the hard facts and the voices of the public.
Notes
[i] Ashley Biviano, “Garnar Delivers $402M Broome Budget Plan. Here’s What You Need to Know.,” Press & Sun-Bulletin, accessed October 11, 2020, https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2020/09/10/what-you-should-know-broome-county-budget-covid-19-pandemic-economy/5743466002/. The full budget is here.
[iii] Data from “Budgets | Broome County,” accessed July 24, 2020, http://www.gobroomecounty.com/countyexec/budgets.
[iv] Data from New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, Statistics, accessed October 11, 2020.
[v] As reported by the press: Bob Joseph, “Binghamton Nursing Home Identified as COVID-19 Hotspot,” WNBF News Radio 1290, accessed October 11, 2020, https://wnbf.com/binghamton-nursing-home-identified-as-covid-19-hotspot/; Amy Hogan, “Willow Point Nursing Home Details Battle Against COVID-19,” accessed October 11, 2020, http://www.wicz.com/story/42409543/willow-point-nursing-home-details-battle-against-covid19; WBNG, “Vestal Park Rehabilitation and Nursing Center Identified as Coronavirus Hotspot, Other Broome County Updates,” WBNG (blog), April 20, 2020, https://wbng.com/2020/04/20/vestal-park-rehabilitation-and-nursing-center-identified-as-coronavirus-hotspot-other-broome-county-updates/; Anthony Borrelli, “Broome County Jail Is a ‘hot Spot’ for Coronavirus. How Is the Facility Limiting the Outbreak?,” Pressconnects, accessed April 21, 2020, https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/public-safety/2020/04/20/coronavirus-broome-county-jail-inmates-quarantine/5158860002/.
[vi] WBNG, “Garnar: Broome County Correctional Facility No Longer COVID-19 Hotspot, Other Updates,” WBNG (blog), May 4, 2020, https://wbng.com/2020/05/04/garnar-broome-county-correctional-facility-no-longer-covid-19-hotspot-other-updates/.
[vii] The report may be accessed here. The county could not (would not?) provide any information on the total number of tests given in the jail.
[viii] Alexis C. Madrigal Meyer Robinson, “Why Trump’s Rapid-Testing Plan Worries Scientists,” The Atlantic, October 9, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/do-rapid-antigen-tests-have-accuracy-problem/616681/; Ken Belson and Ben Shpigel, “Nursing Homes in Nevada Told to Stop Using Rapid Coronavirus Tests,” The New York Times, October 8, 2020, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/07/world/covid-coronavirus.
[ix] For example, Monroe county’s pandemic plan is here, Warren County’s plan is here.
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