Brooks Sobers up State of the County

Monroe County Executive Brooks deserves credit for a few things.

One is putting sanity back in the State of the County address, which had taken a strange path from being an end-of-year wrap up to being a middle of the year extravaganza.

Former County Executive Jack Doyle took to holding them in May. He made them into traveling road shows that would be held in corporate office building lobbies and factories.

Brooks has put a little sanity back in the process. She held hers in (gasp) January… as if the previous year had actually just ended. She did it in the Monroe County Legislative chambers.

And Brooks is getting her kudos for being more willing to reach across the aisle. Even the speech seemed to suggest this conciliatory tone. During the talk, she surprised the audience by embracing a law that would mandate 48-hour notification for commercial pesticide spraying. This is a decidedly anti-Republican proposal.

Too bad that Brooks, couldn’t also make mention that Democratic County Legislator Lynda Garner Goldstein had long been a proponent of this plan, and had submitted legislation in years past that had been summarily ignored by the GOP legislature.

That would have really been a bipartisan bridge-mender.

But at least we heard the words at the beginning of the year, and in a place where government is conducted.