Another Anti-Poverty Grift

When I lived in Rochester, I, and everyone else, was acquainted with the work of Rachel Barnhart. Barnhart was a reporter for a couple of different local TV stations. She was generally a good journalist, a bit quirky and prone to getting into personality conflicts. Barnhart ran for a number of different political offices in Rochester, as a Democrat, and finally won a seat on the County Legislature. She has a contentious relationship with the Democratic majority on the Leg.

When I heard that Barnhart was running for office, I thought it was great — I knew that she’d definitely be the kind to give an inside perspective on running for and serving in office. Her Substack does not disappoint, and there’s an interesting story there.

Basically, the County Leg has $25 million of anti-poverty funds to disburse. Rochester has a big urban poverty problem, and there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of attempts to change that. This $25 million is going to be spent in part on $1,000 monthly subsidies for pregnant women, and for rental subsidies for people who qualify. But $16.8 million is going to be spent on this:

Yep, they’re going to make these small payments based on achievements. I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that $6.5 of the $16.8 million will be spent on administrative costs. How the hell else would you be able to track and disperse these relatively tiny payments? This is “better a thousand people go hungry than one undeserving person get a free lunch” means testing in action. $300 to get your GED? Come on.

This unproven, obviously (to me) silly effort is the work of a Boston non-profit called Empath. Rachel’s post goes through all the lack of scientific basis, and the possible conflicts of interest of this program, as you’d expect from a top-notch journalist. Read that at her site if you’re interested.

Part of the dynamic here is that Rochester’s county government was Republican-run until a few years ago, a hangover from the days when Republicans were fairly liberal in New York State. (They’re MAGA now). A few years ago, Democrat Adam Bello ran and won the County Executive seat. He’s from Irondequoit, a suburb north of the city. Bello is part of the Morelle machine, led by Joe Morelle, who was Andrew Cuomo’s ally as majority leader in the State Assembly, until he ran and won the NY-25 congressional seat to represent Rochester. Morelle and Bello are white guys from the suburbs. I’m not surprised that this cockamamie plan came from their rule, since it provides an opportunity to “fight poverty” while letting a bunch of contractors get their beaks wet.

County leadership doesn’t like Barnhart, but, unlike them, Barnhart cares about the city. She’s a white woman who’s in her 40s who attended and graduated from inner-city schools, where her parents taught. Today, she lives in another inner city neighborhood. She is sincerely interested in ending poverty in Rochester, she loves the city, and she’s part of it in a way that few white people are. She’s far from perfect, but I sure don’t doubt her sincerity nor her bona fides.

I’m sure dumb plans like this are wasting money all over the nation. I just know about this one because I lived in Rochester and still read some of the news from there.