County Government

Quotes of the Day on the Albany County Nursing Home

September 20, 2012 County Government

A couple of reactions to the latest Albany County attempt to build a new nursing home. Perhaps we’ll get into details later, but the only real change from the last version of the County’s application to the latest revision is an increased revenue estimate because they think the managed long-term care changes the State is […]

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Strike 3 on a New Albany County Nursing Home?

September 17, 2012 County Government

Will get to the substance in a later posting. But this is verbatim from the State Health Department’s recommendation to the Public Health and Health Planning Council. Albany County Nursing Home, a 250-bed county owned residential health care facility (RHCF), requests approval to construct a 200-bed replacement facility and certify a 30-slot adult day health […]

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Albany County Files its 2011 Annual Financial Report – Late

September 13, 2012 Accounting

EMMA, the Electronic Municipal Market Access operated by the Municipal Security Rulemaking Board reported that Albany County had filed its Annual Financial Report late. In the municipal securities business, this is referred to as a “material event,” which are “municipal bond issuer information considered to be significant by a reasonable investor”. See the attached notice, […]

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Albany County: Where Poor Politics and Poor Management Come Together

September 9, 2012 County Government

As we head toward this coming week’s primary, a controversy has boiled over in Albany County District Attorney’s race. And rightly so. Attorney Lee Kindlon is challenging the incumbent, David Soares. Initially the controversy was about an allegedly “secret” bonus program, supplementing the pay of some employees in the District Attorney’s Office. The controversy boiled […]

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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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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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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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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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NPR Notices the Fading County Nursing Homes in NYS

August 17, 2012 County

National Public Radio does a story on New York’s counties getting out of the nursing home business. Click here for text and sound.

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