Health and Human Services
I’d like to say that I’m not happy that you passed Public Health’s resolution to abolish 19 positions this morning in Human Resources Committee, and I’m especially concerned because you seemed to give yourselves the latitude to vote in favor of the resolution, despite your reservations about it, after a discussion of how you would evaluate the success of the Director’s restructure plans by having anonymous surveys of the staff and meetings with the county manager and his deputy, where staff would be encouraged to express their concerns. The truth is that the Public Health rank and file staff have no reason to trust the manager, the deputy, or the commissioner of HR. They made numerous complaints about the management of public health last year and not only were all their complaints unfounded, but the same practices continued by the management with complainants targeted and subjected to vindictive reprisals and bullying. The staff at Public Health have no one who they can really trust, including, now, the members of this committee. I hope you’ll reconsider passing this next week. If you don’t like the whole resolution and feel you only want to pass a part of it, ask for it to be amended or rewritten.
Since I was cut off in the last committee, I’d like to get my entire comment on the record now for the Legislator from District 7 concerning his rant last week, when he accused me and other members of the public of causing the closing of the ACC. First, I’m proud to say that I went down to the city for that meeting in November 2023, and after hearing testimony about the deteriorating conditions at the ACC since Infinite Care had been illegally managing the facility for the preceding 2 years, the DOH voted not to recommend that Infinitecare get their CON. Then, for the next three years, the Legislator from District 7 stuck his head in the sand and pretended that the CON was still viable and that Infinitecare was doing a great job, the only evidence for that being the sniff test he performed at the ACC four years ago, and the fact that Infinitecare now owns a lot more nursing homes then it did when it first applied to act as our consultant. Despite all the surveys, citations, and other information that he was presented with, this legislator pretended that nothing was wrong at the ACC, absolutely failed to protect the residents and staff of the ACC in any way, and did absolutely nothing constructive in the last three years to develop any plan for alternative management of the ACC, or to hold InfiniteCare accountable for the many violations of their contract. He finally voted to close our nursing home last March in an illegal executive session.
The legislator from District 7’s attitude is one reason why I’ve been coming to all of these meetings for the last 6 years; namely because I would not trust him one single inch. I watched him change his friends and allegiances as soon as he took his legislative seat at the beginning of 2024. I would like his constituents to think about how he misrepresents their interests by denying the harm being done to the residents and staff of the county nursing home and how he deliberately voted to strip the taxpayers of our few health resources such as the ACC, which we taxpayers have been paying for for 40 years. About 17% of Fallsburg residents are over 65 and there will not be enough nursing home beds in the future for people to be cared for close to their families. That’s on you, Mr. Legislator from District 7, not me.