Cattaraugus County Budget 2026: Less Meat, More Bone

22 jobs cut, nursing home woes, county reserves are gone

By Tiger Hulin,

Cattaraugus County’s tentative 2026 budget weighs in at nearly three hundred million dollars. That sounds big until you start reading the fine print. It cuts eighty-four positions and closes the year without a penny of surplus money to soften the blow on taxpayers.

Kelly Reed, now a few months into her role as County Administrator, called it “a sad day.” She is not wrong. Twenty-two of those eliminated positions are actually filled, which means twenty-two people are checking the news tonight to see if they still have a job next year.

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The Balancing Act

Reed’s plan walks the same narrow bridge that counties across New York are trying to cross. Healthcare costs are rising. State mandates keep stacking up. The tax cap will not budge. Every step forward seems to come with a shove back.

She says she can find work for most of the displaced employees. Maybe she can. But even with the lowest full-value tax rate since 1983, it is hard to celebrate when services keep shrinking.

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The Pines Problem

Buried in the budget is the line that should make every voter sit up. The Pines Machias has no reserves left and is running on a loan from The Pines Olean — about eight hundred thirty-three thousand dollars. The Olean facility will have to dip into its own reserves just to break even.

That is not a budget efficiency. That is one nursing home bailing out another.

Add to that the more than one hundred twenty thousand dollars paid this year in fines, along with another thirty thousand sent to Microscope Inc., a consulting firm the county will neither confirm nor deny was hired to prepare for a looming federal inspection they feared would go badly. Whether it was the first or the second, the result is the same — a six-figure drain that did not reach the residents or the bedside staff who keep them alive.

Every dollar redirected into penalties or public-relations repair work is a dollar stolen from care. The homes did not fail for lack of consultants. They failed for lack of attention.

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The Mandate Mill

Reed laid it out plainly:

• Medicaid eats thirty-five percent of the tax levy.
• Pensions take another twenty percent.
• The rest trickles away into court costs, special education, probation, and welfare programs.

Add it up and you begin to see why so many small counties are running out of air. The county is still the one writing the checks, but Albany is holding the pen.

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A Word on Priorities

A government that cannot keep its nursing homes solvent and cannot keep its people on payroll should probably stop bragging about how low its tax rate is. The house looks good from the street, but the foundation is cracking.

A house that is falling apart is always cheaper when you stop repairing it, but the collapse still comes, just later and louder.

Kelly Reed did not build this problem. She inherited it, along with decades of patchwork decisions and quiet deferrals. That is like inheriting money from a family member and then declaring it was a gift, not an inheritance. As the County Nursing Homes Director and Assistant Administrator before stepping into her current role, her obligation to keep residents safe was clear. What is not clear is whether she carried out those duties when it mattered most.

The question now is whether the Legislature will give her the tools to fix it or keep pretending that spreadsheets can heal what policy neglect has broken.

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The Rumor Mill

Two separate county nurses have come forward with concerns that the Department of Health may soon eliminate its in-home visit programs. These reports remain unconfirmed, but they come from inside the system, where staff are already being quietly reassigned or encouraged to apply elsewhere. Some have received invitations to stay, others have not.

If true, the change would affect bargaining-unit nurses covered by union contracts that guarantee notice, seniority rights, and fair reassignment. Those protections are not optional. They exist to prevent precisely this kind of silent reshuffling.

The county and the unions have not yet responded to requests for comment. Until they do, the story remains a rumor — but one that carries the weight of anxiety from people who have given their careers to public service.

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The Bottom Line

Cattaraugus County has spent the last few years living off its savings. That day is over.
This budget is not just smaller. It is thinner. It shows what happens when you stretch a county past its limits and call it progress.

The hearings later this month will tell the real story, not in dollars but in faces. Those twenty-two jobs. Those nursing-home residents. Those empty chairs in departments that once answered phones.

Maybe this budget is honest. But honest and healthy are not the same thing.

Stay tuned for news on my Article 78, which I will be filing against Cattaraugus County. The public deserves more than a balance sheet. It deserves answers, transparency, and accountability. That process will begin soon, and I intend to see it through.

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Tiger 2025
You can only cut so far before you start cutting into the people themselves.