In his 2010 budget, Erie County Executive Chris Collins has proposed closing the health clinics at 608 William St. and 1500 Broadway. These county clinics provide 22,000 patient visits per year serving a largely low-income, minority population of adults and children. There are two major problems with this proposal.

First, these clinics operate in the black and make a profit for Erie County. It simply doesn’t make fiscal sense to discontinue anything that brings in revenue to Erie County, especially when state aid and federal stimulus dollars are rapidly drying up.

Second, the clinics provide an invaluable service, both to their patients and to the community as a whole. Primary care clinics are essential to achieving wellness. They focus on prevention and help patients address everyday health issues like diabetes, heart disease and the flu.

When people lack access to the primary and preventative care that the county clinics provide, they end up in the emergency room, usually with far worse and, not surprisingly, more expensive problems. The inability of the uninsured to access primary care is costing every taxpayer a fortune and is one driving force behind the movement for national health care reform.

The county executive claims he is terminating the clinics because he wants to end the county’s participation in non-mandated programs. This argument rings false, however. The county executive has made no attempt to terminate the sheriff’s road patrols for suburban towns and villages, or county roads and golf courses, which are also non-mandated.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not suggesting he should. But clearly, Collins has cherry-picked which non-mandated services to eliminate, and, so far, the ones he has targeted (WIC, the city parks, lead hazard abatement and now the clinics) have been programs relied on by city residents, many of whom are people in need.

This dynamic not only reeks of inequity, but it also pits the city against the suburbs. Furthermore, it perpetuates the parochial and short-sighted thinking of “every man for himself.”

An unprecedented 200 people turned out for the Legislature’s public hearing on the budget Thursday night. The vast majority were there about the clinics and the message was loud and clear: closing the profitable county clinics in the middle of a flu epidemic, especially when they serve a vulnerable population, is an outrage!

Add your voice. Write to the county executive and express your concern over the access and viability of our primary health clinics and our local health care system. Or tell the county executive that he should keep the clinics open and use his Six Sigma efficiencies to help them achieve even greater profitability. Either way, make it clear we will all be better off when this administration recognizes Western New York will “sink or swim or together.”

Maria R. Whyte is Democratic majority leader of the Erie County Legislature.