A student of mine came to me in January after failing the New York State Global Regents exam and noted that in spite of his overall failing grade, he performed better than most of his classmates did on the multiple-choice section of the exam. He told me that he “doesn’t like to write essays” and ‘hates short answer questions” and so he just skipped those sections of the exam. If I only graded the one section of the exam, he would have done well, but unfortunately for the young man; doing well in one section does not provide the whole picture. Simply put, I could not ignore the bad sections and give him a passing grade.

What the young man tried to do is similar to what Orleans County officials have been doing for the last few months. They want to publicize numbers that cast the Orleans County Government in a favorable light while ignoring the numbers that clearly show that there are serious problems in this county, some of which the county government has exacerbated, and others that cannot continue to be ignored, like double digit unemployment.

In order to get a clear perspective on Orleans County’s financial condition, one must analyze all of the recent numbers publicized in the media. In fact, when the Tax Foundation came out with the results of a study showing Orleans County as having the highest property tax to property value ratio in the nation, one county lawmaker noted it “didn’t portray the whole picture.” I agree that the Tax Foundation’s number did not portray the “whole picture,” but it did confirm what Orleans County residents already know, our taxes are excessively high and they are rising. Taxpayers do not need a study to tell them that, they simply need to look at their property tax bills for the last three years and look at how much they have gone up.

The newer number that one local media outlet noted “cast Orleans in a favorable light,” sounds a lot better than the Tax Foundation’s number which resulted in unflattering headlines for Orleans County Lawmakers, but in reality the “good” number raises some serious questions. That new number released by SeeThroughNY, a non-profit organization, put Orleans County at the bottom of the list for per capita spending.  On the surface, per capita may sound like a fair way to calculate county spending but when you include around 2,500 state prisoners as members of the county population the number is simply not accurate. To the best of my knowledge, state prisoners do not pay any property taxes.

It is also important to note that the SeeThroughNY report uses the 2007 budget figure and since 2007, the county budget has increased by around 18%, and yes, that is in less than two years. So it is interesting that on the Orleans County Government home page they post links to stories noting “Good News About Orleans County! “Orleans ranks among most frugal counties in the state.” In reality, it is old news based on bad math, quite deceiving, and overtly political in an election year.

Of course, not everything Orleans County Lawmakers do is bad, they do many good things and a few of them have good intentions. Nonetheless, it is frustrating to see the government engaged in a public relations campaign rather than dealing with a government whose expenditures rise while the area’s population declines.  If lawmakers really want to pass this test then they will have to stop focusing on making themselves look good and start figuring out what will make this county better.