Steve Hepburn: Legislators ignored pleas of experienced county department heads

To The Daily Sun,

What a disingenuous letter from Rep Norm Silber (R-Gilford) talking about the indiscriminate slashing of the county budget led by him and other Libertarian-Republicans in the delegation.

Norm says their cuts were made “with input from the head of each county department.” This is technically true, but what Norm neglects to say is that the input was the heads of departments advising the executive committee that their proposed cuts would leave their department underfunded.

The heads of three departments reiterated this during the full delegation meeting on Tuesday night, pleading for the delegation to reinstate at least some of their $1.7million cuts.

Norm says they spent 20 hours examining the 300+ line items. You don’t have to be a math genius to work out this equals 4 minutes per line item, approximately half of which they decided to cut.

Four minutes vs. many decades of experience from department heads and county commissioners!

This complete lack of thought, foresight and conscience was on display during discussions on Tuesday night. When asked why they decided to cut the audit cost line item, Norm’s reply was essentially “Hmmm… well I looked at the request and the past year actuals and umm… took a guess *mumble* *mumble*… austerity!”. Very informed!

Chair Mike Sylvia (R-Belmont) wasn’t any better. When asked why they cut the overtime budget in the nursing home, Mike confidently replied, “We had to remove excessive overtime”. Once again, 4 minutes of thought focused on “what we can slash and where” vs. the direct experience of the department head.

Vice chair Ray Howard (R- Alton) repeated “unfunded mandates”, “28A, 28A” and “ask the state to pay” over and over again, as if he said it enough times it would magically become true.

This budget approval was a hatchet job led by the Free Stater Mike Sylvia and other Libertarians-in-disguise that have hijacked and railroaded this delegation.

Shameful. 

Steven Hepburn

Gilford