Candidate will fix nursing home mess
By:
Monday, November 03, 2008
It's understandable why fellow Democrats Steve Beckett and Barb Wysocki defend Brendan McGinty in his race against me in county board District 9. They agreed with him that the county nursing home should keep borrowing from the county's general fund until it was depleted. There still is no consolidated budget available to detail the cash position of the nursing home.
A significant factor in the nursing home's finances was the decision, aided and abetted by Beckett and Wysocki, to split the retirement funding for nursing home employees from that of other county employees. It's been said there's a "subsidy" from property taxes that is given to the nursing home. What looks on paper like a $900,000-plus "subsidy" goes largely to funding the home's employees' retirement. The actual funding it provides for operating expenses is a little over $100,000 out of a $16 million budget. That bad decision accounts for most of the red ink.
One can take any county department, split out its employees' retirement and then find they, too, are running a deficit. If McGinty's service is "rock solid," as Beckett and Wysocki claim, then why is the nursing home in such a financial mess after four years of his service as finance chair? I pledge I will get to the bottom of the financial mess at the nursing home and do what it takes to put it back on its feet.
MIKE LEHMAN
Urbana