Congressman Bob Turner’s attempt to show support for the city of Syracuse in its budget travails is drawing fire from Onondaga County’s GOP chairman.
Turner’s campaign issued a statement saying….
“…Turner today warned President Barack Obama that many more cities, including Syracuse, NY, and counties, including Nassau and Rockland, will face effective bankruptcy within two or three years if the U.S. economy is allowed to slip back into a recession. Syracuse will be dead broke within two years, its mayor Stephanie Miner announced yesterday, if it doesn’t get financial relief…
…We know the problems and they are serious,” Congressman Turner said. “Years of overspending and exorbitant pension costs, compounded by a staggering recession, have left many of our local governments on life support. But now we need to focus on solutions as a nation. We cannot raise taxes — that will only further weaken a debilitated economy — so we must adopt a pro-growth national agenda to create the tax revenue to stabilize teetering municipalities. If we were to slip back into a recession, it would be devastating to municipalities that are only getting by week-by-week today.”
The statement evoked some criticism from Tom Dadey, who heads the Onondaga County republican party and was the first republican leader to back Turner rival Wendy Long’s bid for the Senate.
Turner has been MIA in the Syracuse area during the campaign (perhaps because of the lack of support among party leaders in the area). Dadey, referring back to a brief campaign blip over the Turner campaign’s misspelling of Binghamton in an announcement of a visit there..(the spelling given was “Binghampton”)…says, “The one positive thing is, he knows how to spell Syracuse correctly.”
Dadey went on to blast the Turner statement saying it simply calls for more government spending, not tax and spending cuts.
Update:
Jessica Proud, a Turner spokeswoman offered this response…..
“We welcome Mr. Dadey’s input, but urge him to actually read Congressman Turner’s statement. The congressman is urging the President to cut spending and taxes so that cities like Syracuse can regrow their business base. No Republican chairman can responsibly disagree with that. If we don’t move this economy forward with a pro-job-growth federal agenda, cities and counties across New York are going to be in trouble.”