facilities to meet those higher discharge standards and requirements however those higher standards do not seem required or justified it would be more prudent to study the present impact on existing water qualities prior to discharge and to strengthen the local economy and to be able to create jobs it's certainly our priority although government doesn't create jobs we are certainly at the table working tirelessly to foster the environment that increases economic development opportunity and certainly allows business to grow and expand and to create jobs in the private sector there are a number of things that we do locally by maintaining a stable tax rate providing affordable financing and incentives through our industrial development agency monroe county is certainly at the table each and every day to assist businesses to improve and expand their operations locally despite this activity at the local there are a number of federal regulations that when coupled with the of unfunded mandatesh and you hear us talk about that all the timeh has led to enormously high property taxes that have threatened our economic prosperity by driving businesses jobs and young talents away from our state in search of greater opportunities elsewhere certain federal regulations have grown increasingly detrimental to the small to midsized companies that have become this region's economic bread and butter for example the federal funding accountability and transparency act of two thousand and six and two thousand and eight hinders small businesses looking to become subcontractors on large federal contracts because it's not cost effective for them federal reporting requirements are the same for a prime contractor who has a multimillion dollar contract as it is for a small contractor who's doing twenty five thousand dollars worth of the work these reporting requirements for small business include salaries and bonuses of officers pension values specifics on compensation in excess of ten thousand dollars this rule highly discourages small business from bidding and securing subcontracts on federal projects as the cost of monitoring and reporting outweighs the profit another impediment  local economic development in monroe county is a requirement under the u s small business administration five hundred and four program the five hundred and four program is widely used in this community it requires that one job be created for every sixty five thousand dollars in federal funds borrowed the amount should be increased to one job for every one hundred thousand dollars borrowed to allow businesses to focus on investing in the new technology required to remain competitive in a global economy often times in government too much emphasis is placed on a company's head count what often gets neglected is a company's investment in the economy investing in capital equipment is often a great indicator of positive economic growth federal regulations can also indirectly impact local economic development efforts by forcing counties to pick up the cost of unfunded mandates leaving little left over for economic development initiatives that put people to work and strengthen the economy one example in the past these projects only required a grading release which is in essence an unofficial handshake for a use of a property and only required a grading release that was inexpensive yet effective the new requirement to project totals and prohibits construction from moving forward in an efficient manner it's critical that new york state use the original requirements for rightofway acquisition so costs are not eventually shifted on to the taxpayer or back to the monroe county has estimated that this new mandate will cost three million dollars in this community alone a new federal environmental services regulation will soon change the way counties are required to clean up storm water runoff with no longterm funding source to do so this new regulation has the potential to add significant cost to the planning design and construction of new economic development projects when we get into the questionandanswer phase i do have three people here with me m garland from our environment services department judy styler economic development director and terry rice our transportation director because they are the detailed people in closing i will just mention one other thing that we discovered in a very real during the distribution of the stimulus monies a lot of counties like ours were unable to apply those dollars because the requirements needed to take a property from idea to shovelready status made it impossible for us to ever have a project ready to receive stimulus fund designed to create jobs so certainly when you talk about environmental regulations and some of the permitting processes  local governments have to go through to make sites shovelready it's an impediment to us being able to help business on the local level and medicaid is my final word i don't have to say anything about medicaid today you know that that is the cost dragger of property taxes mainly in new york state of the county jail sheriffs take seriously their responsibility to operate the county jail safely and securely for public safety and for inmates in their care and custody we recognize the critical issues related to the sexual assaults of inmates while incarcerated and understand the need to take reasonable steps to prevent any such abuse sheriffs know that sexual misconduct have no place in a professionally and morally run correctional environment we also know that rape especially inmateoninmate rape is much less of an occurrence in county jails than in prisons due in part to the shortterm stay of the most county jail inmates their local community connections their opportunity visitation for family and friends it is clear that many of the proposed prea standards although perhaps appropriately designed for prisons will apply equally but inappropriately to county jails prison systems are generally much larger than county jails and they are intended for longterm stays prea does not really recognize the difference in the two types of correctional facilities prison systems and county jails imposing burdensome standards  county jail facilities would be impractical even in the best economic times the inmate population turnover and county jails is frequent in two thousand and ten wayne county incarcerated one seven hundred and nineteen inmates w hpercent or nine hundred and forty five inmates being released in the first seventy two hours of incarceration under these conditions many of the proposed standards could not be implemented effectively yet many of the proposed standards would impose huge costs collection and reporting obligations to their state oversight agency in our case the new york state commission of corrections adding a federal layer of audit will only add a financial burden and will create conflictin obligations between state and federal mandates again all sheriffs recognize that inmates should be free from sexual assault while incarcerated washington should not presume that sheriffs will not do the right thing unless mandated in minute detail a washington rule congress should not leave it to a federal agency to determine how a sheriff can best accomplish his or her obligation to operate a safe secure and humane county jail facility the safety security and good astronomical we can't afford it we are a wastewater treatment plant little plug our operator was just named operator of the year so he knows what he's doing and we feel that the water that we're discharging what drove that change in legislation ms brooks yeah and terry rice could certainly add what drove it i don't have the answer to that but he can add that to the testimony there is a requirement that communities change all of their street one county you know across this great nation what we propose as an alternative is that local communities manage the condition of their street signs and as we go out and make changes to those street signs as we have to do we can certainly comply with the federal requirement but to just say let's go out and replace signs some of which are very new just doesn't make sense to me and it really is i think when we look at some of the posterchild figureh you know say this is whath here's the goal let the local communities figure out how we get there and how we manage the resources to pay for it ms buerkle thank you while we have the opportunity i would be interestedh i know medicaid is such a significant issue for the counties and what it does to your property taxes with regards to and i digress just a little bit the block does it help or does it not make a difference if we talk about medicaid being  a block grant funding to the state rather than the way it is now in the proposed budget does that help the county does it impact on you at all ms brooks it depends again you know we're so reliant on the state and one of our frustrations is in new york state the counties pay for hpercent of the program and i believe there are only two states left where the counties actually have a financial stake in the medicaid program but we are very reliant  programs medicaid being the largest that consumesh nine programs that consume hpercent of the county property tax levy statewide so take everything we collect hpercent of that is paying for nine programs and medicaid somewhere between twelve and one four hundred inmates a day could possibly have to put two three or four employees on i would be forced to put a fulltime employee on to interview every inmate that came through i already have seventy officers and one hundred and forty inmates today in the facility i think it's burdensome because of the programs that we have built since two thousand also all the audits that we have done i have a federal team that comes in every january that's there for a week five people for a week the state commission of corrections that comes in two or three days twice a year the department of health comes in and inspects the department of education comes in because jails have to provide education to sixteen to twenty year olds for three hours a day so we basically have schools in our jails plus we are very open in our visitation of contact with family and friends i just think again prisons and jails are two completely different systems they house two completely different type of people ninetyfivehpercent of inmates in the wayne county jailh probably be parallel across the stateh are released back to the same people places and things their towns and villages only hpercent go to state not be punished by a onesizefitsall from albany and again i agree with the county executive here if we are in charge of the jail we should have more decisionmaking power and how we run our jails ms buerkle have you been able to estimate the cost drains and it probably took us almost four years to complete that project i went to a seminar before one of the projects began and they said the first thing you need to do is buy a fourdrawer cabinet because by the time we get this project done it's going to be full and that's the paperwork of public spending and i don't know how in the world we can continue to put mandates on people the intentions i'm sure are good but the ability to actually pay for it is not there so if i can tell you that you have to do something but i don't offer you anyway of doing it then the burden then falls on the people that are paying the local taxes that's sometimes overburdening we don't see that down the road ms brooks and just to emphasize that point in monroe county seven hundred and forty four thousand residents we have a billion dollar budget eighty two percent of our budget is mandated by the state and federal governments so when we talk about mandates imagine running your business and controlling hpercent of what you do  businesses you can only do what you can afford to do the fact that somebody legislates it or regulates it doesn't make it doable so thank you so much for what you're doing and i know it's frustrating but just stick with us we're going to try to get this