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Onondaga County legislators unanimously pass 2025 budget

Ava Pukatch
/
WRVO

Onondaga County legislators voted unanimously to approve the 2025 budget on Tuesday. Some county Democrats and Republicans clashed over final amendment proposals.

Over a dozen budget amendments were on the agenda during yesterday's county legislature session. All of them were proposed by Democratic legislators. Legislature Chairman Tim Burtis began the session calling the amendments "reckless and irresponsible." He said the discussions should have began sooner.

"Personally, I like to have a lot of detail," Burtis said. "Where is it coming from, where is it going to go, what's the need, what's the backup behind it, and we didn't have any of that. So that to me was what was reckless."

The amendments were aimed mainly on funding for housing and projects in the Department of Social Services and were either voted down or pulled to return to committee for further discussion. Legislature Mo Brown, who proposed some of the amendments, said while he hopes further discussion can help, intervention is needed.

"We adopted a similar budget to last year, literally based on budget, and we're not seeing the results," Brown said. "So I think drastic intervention is needed. My colleagues have mentioned that these are things they'd want to explore and I'm going to take them at their word."

Brown said he believes legislators are focused on achieving the same goals but differ on how to get there.

Abigail is a temporary WRVO News Reporter/Producer working on regional and digital news stories. She graduated from SUNY Oswego in 2022 where she studied English and Public Relations. Abigail enjoys reading, writing, exploring CNY and spending time with family and friends. Abigail first joined the WRVO team as a student reporter in June 2022.