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.