For decades, the city and state infrastructure had been neglected in order to save money. State environmental and health agencies had been defunded, and great public servants had become disillusioned and retired, leaving these agencies a shadow of what they were supposed to be. All the budget cuts and so-called fiscal “responsibility” had resulted in a winner-take-all culture, a disdain for regulations and career regulators, a rubber-stamping of bad ideas, a gross underfunding of environmental enforcement, limited understanding of and expertise in public health, and a disregard for the poor.
