John W Rodat

County on Crack? (Nassau County Debt Variety)

September 7, 2012 County Government

Nassau County, NY is not in financial trouble because of economic decline. It’s among the wealthiest counties in New York. It is in financial trouble because of an lengthy history of bad decision-making and evidently an inability to break its debt habit. Nassau County has a history of borrowing to pay tax refunds. Having been […]

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Rules for Wonks and Hacks

September 6, 2012 Uncategorized

Dredging the archives, we came across Rules for Wonks and Hacks, which I first posted in January, 2005. I was amusing myself while watching the Kabuki drama that is a budget hearing. Wonks and hacks rarely understand one another. The rare wonk who understands the politics or the rare hack who understands the technical will […]

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Wonks and Hacks

September 6, 2012 Policy

Bill Clinton’s speech last night brought it all back. Blending politics and policy, he put the lie to the unfortunate, unnatural and danger of their separation. This is likely to be a setup for a lengthy post. Stay tuned. Anyway, I posted Wonks and Hacks in March, 2004. Here it is in full. Bruce Reed, […]

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Corporations and Government are Almost the Same, Except Corporations are Voluntary?

September 6, 2012 Corporations

In the midst of the political season and the political conventions, in which the role of corporations is an increasingly significant issue (no corporations are not people), David Burge, who blogs here as Iowahawkblog, tweets this: “Government” is just a word for things we do together. “Corporation” is just a word for things we do […]

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Constituent Consistency

September 5, 2012 County Government

One of the things that’s interesting about this story in the Observer, out in Dunkirk, NY is how the comments (vitriol included) are so like what you’ll read and hear all over New York where a county is considering doing anything other than building a new nursing home. Here are a couple of examples: FredoniaFred:The […]

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The American Conservative has Been Running Some Not Nuts Essays

August 28, 2012 Conservative

My liberal friends will be appalled. But suffice to say, there are at least some writers who at The American Conservative who offer a different perspective that what we’re getting from political “conservatives,” (most of whom are really radicals) and who at least know when it’s appropriate to gag. I may not be as conservative, […]

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NYS Number of the Day: County Overhead Costs

August 27, 2012 Administration

What was reported by New York’s counties, excluding New York City for general government administration and operations and miscellaneous general government administrative costs in 2010? Another way to think of this is general overhead; it excludes administrative costs in program functions, e.g., public safety administration. We’ll do that calculation later. Though they are included for […]

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Legal Mandates? Let’s Ignore Them or Maybe Pick a Fight

August 27, 2012 County Government

For regrettably too many local officials in New York, the flip side the the “unfunded mandates” argument is “no mandates.” Aside from sheer ignorance, this takes a couple forms. The first is there’s no mandate, but we’ll spend a lot of money anyway, e.g., county nursing homes. The second, is there are mandates, but we’ll […]

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Today’s Quote of the Day is About a Monkey, Politics and Democracy

August 24, 2012 Governance

Oddly enough, today’s quote of the day is about a macaque monkey that’s been running loose in Tampa, FL. And no, this is not about the upcoming Republican convention, to be held in Tampa. But it is about governance and democracy and finding ways to accommodate ourselves to others, including other primates, it’s from Jon […]

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NY Numbers of the Day

August 23, 2012 County Government

Question: Among counties in New York (excluding New York City and excluding Columbia County, which at the time I pulled the data, had not submitted theirs), from 1998 to 2010, which county had the highest rate of growth in employee benefit expenditures and what was it? Rensselaer County at 375.6 percent. Which had the lowest? […]

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