August 1, 2002
The Buffalo Report interview:
James Pitts
President, Buffalo Common Council
The Buffalo Report interview:
James Pitts
President, Buffalo Common Council
Buffalo Common Council President James Pitts is quick to say that the Buffalo News distorts or ignores his positions on such key issues as Council reorganization and regionalization. The News says he opposes both. Pitts says he opposes neither, but he does oppose a form of reorganization and a model of Council organization that he is certain would do the citizens of Buffalo far more harm than good, though a small group of businessmen might profit handsomely from it, and the mayor would be happy because the political power of the Council would be significantly reduced.
It seemed to me that, with one exception, the coverage about Pitts in the Buffalo News has had more to do with who or what the News thinks he is rather than what he's saying or doing. The exception occurred on July 24, the day after the Common Council's seven white members voted to abolish all four at-large positions, a plan opposed by all the Council's non-white members. Pitts made a number of remarks during that passionate voting session, and the next day the Buffalo News devoted two columns, in a box above the fold, to a verbatim transcript of those remarks.
Margaret Sullivan, editor of the Buffalo News, wrote in her Sunday July 28 column that:Nonsense. The Buffalo News didn't devote two columns to James Pitts's unedited words to give you and me insight into his thinking on this key issue. If they'd wanted to do that, they'd have afforded him the long conversational interviews they've afforded the Rigas family again and again, as well as every new or returning Buffalo Bills quarterback or Sabres goalie, and they'd have done the ordinary neatening editors and reporters always do when translating something spoken to something that will be read. No: they devoted all that space to Pitts's public rhetoric to show how slangy and unclinical his public prose is, to let their readers know what kind of a person they think he really is. The News printed all those words not for what Jim Pitts said, but for how Jim Pitts said it. They know perfectly well the way unedited raw transcripts look on a printed page. (Curiously, they didn't post it on their web site, as they post everything else, and neither did they send it up to Lexis.)One unusual step we took last week to deepen our coverage was to publish Council President Pitts's verbatim remarks from the voting session in full, so that readers could see for themselves the passion and reasoning behind his call for his constituency to rise up in protest of the plan.
I suspect that if the Buffalo News's editorial board and political reporters who are so down on Jim Pitts had been in a black church once in their lives they'd understand more about his oratorical style than they've learned in all their bone-picking over his possible motives. I am more and more convinced that those white folks don't understand what he's doing because they can't or won't hear what he's saying. His public rhetorical style is not the rhetorical style of the Saturn Club or the Buffalo Club or the Garret Club or the Buffalo News editorial room or the Buffalo Niagara Partnership board room or the Cragburn Country Club.
For most ordinary people, Pitts's rhetorical style works just fine, which is why they twice elected him president of the Common Council. Pitts is perfectly polylingual: he can talk general street, black street, academic, board room. The whites of limited experience have their difficulty when they hear him speaking in a public forum because they don't know how to read that public performance style. They hear that passion, hear his deliberate grammatical constructions and think and say, "See: he's not like us." That is the only reason, I am certain, that the Buffalo News printed his verbatim remarks at the angry July 23 Common Council meeting.
There's more than enough anger to go around. Mayor Anthony Masiello is so angry he has refused to use his office to introduce a measure of calm to the heated arguments about Council reduction. Many of his own advisers have told him that the escalating rhetoric is doing the city a great amount of harm both here and elsewhere, but he refuses to do anything but sulk. Masiello said early on that he'd sign the Council reduction plan as soon as it reached his desk, which means he has decided that the public hearing he's legally required to hold before he decides is of no interest to him whatsoever, that it is a meaningless formality.
People who've urged Masiello to try to cool things down say he's in a huge snit because he believes Pitts is involved in the recall petition campaign being mounted by former Mayor Jimmy Griffin. No one has produced any evidence that Pitts has been involved. It's been more on the order of, "If Tony is recalled, the city's charter says the Council President becomes mayor. So Pitts must be part of this." In logic, that's called ad hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning: it's thinking backwards. It's more in the realm of script-writing than reasoned political analysis, but reasoned political analysis seems to be in very short supply in downtown Buffalo these days.
This isn't just a mess of slanted journalism and personal miff. Something real is going to happen in just a few months, when Buffalo residents vote on the nine-person district-only Council plan in November. We thought a conversation with Council President Pitts on a variety of issues might help inform those voters, hence the very long interview with James Pitts in this issue of Buffalo Report.
If you are at all interested in the current situation and future of Buffalo I hope you will take the time to read it. If you think Pitts is a villain, read it and see if your opinion holds up. If you know nothing about him, read it and get an idea how what's going on here looks like from his point of view.
Our conversation began with the recall petitions.
Recalling the mayor
Masiello's friends tell me you're behind the recall campaign.
I'm not. Jimmy Griffin is doing it. I hear he's at Quality Market. Everywhere. Somebody told me he may have enough signatures. I don't know where Masiello's at. We just came through one of the toughest budget crunches ever and I carried the Council. Why would I want to create more chaos? It doesn't make sense.
I can tell you that I think he is afraid of it. I've heard that it's not just Jimmy Griffin. It's others who are well-connected and who are even former allies of Masiello who are behind this, for one reason or another.
One theory is that one of the reasons that Masiello reached in there and changed Rose LoTempio's vote on the reapportionment was to play the racial card. And then once the card was played, it would deflect some of the attention on the recall, and even try to gather, as is happening now, people to come to him and appeal to not approve this plan and somehow deflect the recall.
But this action, this plan, has actually spurred the recall in the African-American community. My understanding is that Griffin has been collecting a lot of signatures over in the African-American community.
He was doing it the night of the [July 22] hearing. We had to stop him. He was collecting in the Council chambers and they had to stop him from doing that.
But I'm not behind that. I don't do stuff like that. I have no interest in that. But I do think that Masiello is afraid of it.
Jimmy Griffin had a recall. I still have the button.
Resizing the Council
What about resizing the Common Council?Franczyk
Under the charter you have a provision for what is called a Citizen's Reapportionment Commission to be appointed sometime between January and February. The mayor appoints four and I appoint five of the members. The mayor and I collaborated on the appointments. I collaborated with Council members about who they would like on there. For instance, Joe Golombek wanted this fellow by the name of Manillo, who's an attorney. I put him on, I appointed him. Marc Coppola wanted Mr. Luwango, who's an attorney. The mayor appointed him. The mayor appointed George Arthur. The mayor appointed Laura Gang, who is a member of the Buffalo Partnership, Andy Rudnick's representative. I appointed Frank Messiah. I also appointed a young lady who's a bank manager for HSBC. The mayor appointed a woman who is a professional who just came back to Buffalo from the northwest who is very interested in government and reapportionment. He appointed her. I appointed Andres Garcia from the Hispanic community.
So it was a very broad cross section of people. They had a GIS specialist, a geographic information systems specialist, who had the responsibility for taking the census materials and coming up with proposed maps. They met from February until May of this year. They had hearings in every part of the city. The hearings in some cases were sparsely attended, in some cases well-attended. Usually you get people who have interests who come to these hearings. They were able to go out into all the neighborhoods and come up with what I think is a pretty good process for public participation and input.
They established criteria. There are criteria stipulated within the charter that the Citizens' Reapportionment Commission must consider as they begin to draw their maps. Some of that criteria is basically keeping neighborhoods' consistence. If you take Allentown, for instance, you don't want to split up Allentown, you want to put it in one district, keep it in one district. You have criteria for representing or at least trying to draw lines that represent fair representation when it comes the minority community. And you had other criteria that dealt with not trying to gerrymander but to draw the boundaries in a way that was in the best interests of the city.
They had as much passion and disagreement as to whether the Council should be downsized or should stay at 13, whether it should be 7, whether it should be 8, whether you should have at large, whether you should have a council president. And all of those things were debated passionately among themselves.
What they did, in the best interests of the city, so that it would not end up the way we have actually ended up now, they proposed eliminating one district and one at-large position. So you would end up with 11. The one district that the GIS specialist recommended to be eliminated was the Fillmore district because it lost 32% of its population. Fillmore had been gerrymandered through the reapportionment process 10 years ago. So what happened was, the GIS specialist saw the loss of population and, because of the gerrymander running from over on Fillmore over to the waterfront, he said, "This is a way of trying to resolve that issue as well."
So that's what happened. That recommendation was presented. The Commission approved that plan unanimously, notwithstanding all of their differences, and it was presented to the Council May 23rd. I had already appointed a reapportionment committee with Joe Golombek as the chair. It was sent to that committee.
If you talk about an all-district plan which is being proposed now, then you don't have an independently elected council president or person who's able to rise above the parochialism and act as a check and a balance to the mayor. That was one of the recommendations of the Citizen's Reapportionment Commission—that the council president stays there, that only one district be removed and one councilman at-large. So you would have an 11-member council.
The Buffalo News, Donny Esmonde and others say that African-American Council members don't support downsizing. We support that Citizen's Reapportionment Commission Report. We have always supported it. The News gives the impression that we want to keep the status quo, and that's not the case.
There were some who felt that this might have been aimed at Franczyk, because Franczyk came back and, you know, he ran against me, and so I was charged with, "This is Pitts trying to get Franczyk." [In 1999, David A. Franczyk, whose campaign was heavily underwritten by developer Carl Paladino, the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, and banker Robert Wilmers, failed in an attempt to replace Pitts as Common Council president.] In fact, I did not attend any of the meetings of the Reapportionment Commission. I did not try to influence that process at all. I did not have any interaction with them at all. They came up with that on their own.The Buffalo News and the Number nine
We had pretty much a consensus to try and approve that plan, with some modifications. But I think that you had sort of deadlock in the reapportionment committee, and there were some felt that this was aimed at Franczyk, that's how you ended up where we are today.
It wasn't because I wasn't offering leadership. I'm the one that probably offered the most leadership in trying to resolve this issue, going back last year, as I discussed with Council members, talking about the census process, which districts lost the most population. I talked to many of those Council members about different scenarios that we could possibly go through once we got through this, began this formal process, and I thought we had a very clear understanding about how we were going to deal with this. And I think that what happened is it ended up the way that it is because some began to frame it politically that this was Pitts trying to get Franczyk.
And then ultimately, if you look at the pressure, and the shaping of this coalition by the Buffalo News, I think that had a lot to do with it.
Getting rid of Pitts
The number nine came from the Buffalo News.
Some were saying nine. Nick Bonifacio wanted seven. Joe Golombek at one time wanted ten districts. Some wanted five. Beverly Gray wanted all at-large.
The number nine is a number that came out of Gerry Goldberg and the Buffalo News. If you look at all of the editorials and columns by Esmonde in particular, you see nine. Where did it come from? It came from them.
So Franczyk presented his plan and I guess the coalition that was developing between Marc Coppola, Joe Golombek, and David Franczak, which then spread to Nick Bonifacio, then Fontana, then Rose LoTempio has led to where we are.
There was an effort by myself and others to try and head off this kind of problem. We had seen what had happened in the county, we did not want to go through that. There was a lot of effort to try and resolve those concerns, drawing lines.
Because, notwithstanding what anybody will tell you, even those district councilmembers who pushed and fought and are fighting to downsize the Council, they honestly believe that we're saving money and we need to do this. But they're not talking about themselves. They're pointing the finger at somebody else.
I said at one Council meeting after a very raucous committee meeting,"Look, this is not going anywhere."And I said, "For those who feel that they're speaking to the Buffalo News"—and I've said this throughout various Council meetings as we've talked about reapportionment—"don't decide this based on trying to get headlines in the Buffalo News. Because you will end up committing suicide. Because the Buffalo News is only interested in what the Buffalo News is interested in. They're not interested in what the public and what people want. If we make these decisions strictly based upon that, we're going to end up with a big problem."
That's where nine came from. If you read the editorial the other day, it talks about 'this nine plan being acceptable, let the voters decide. It's not the nine plan that we wanted, but it's a nine plan nonetheless.'
You have what I think an issue and a conclusion that has been shaped principally by the Buffalo News.
If there had not been such a focus on the council president, if I had not been put in this mix as part of the elimination, I would be in a principal role of brokering a compromise. And that's the role that I've played since I've been in city hall.No handout, no bailout
A lot of people don't realize that I was majority leader for many years. I was chairman of every committee that the council has. I even created some of them. The Committee on Community Development I created out of the Committee on Economic Development. If you look at most of the special committees that have been developed that have overseen redevelopment in the city, when it comes to BURA, the relationship between the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency and the Council and developing what I call "shadow government," I've been a principal part of that in trying to develop accountability and efficiency in the two.
What happened with Masiello, he came in one day and took over the block grant program and put it under the charter revision process, put it under his office. I went to the Charter Revision Commission and said "Don't do this." I said, "We have a system that is accountable to all of the checks and balances and we also have a system that's accountable to neighborhoods." So in other words, when we go through the process of developing Buffalo community development budget, we have a process for public input, for neighborhoods to have a role, for community-based organizations to have a role, and we're able to focus on those programs that are not well-connected politically but they're well-connected in neighborhoods.
The way it used to be before I got there, Kleinhans gets theirs, the Philharmonic gets theirs, if you take most of your larger cultural agencies, they get their money. It's the small ones that don't get any money. Langston Hughes Center, many of those neighborhood-based programs that somebody's been doing for many years that just need a little bit of money.
And, as you know, this year the mayor proposed not to fund any of those agencies out of the general fund, which is grant-in-aid, but the Council did fund most of them in the block grant program. So we made up for that.
But if you look at the way things are now, if I was not part of this mix, I would be trying to resolve this issue, and I'm a pretty good negotiator. I used to negotiate with unions, I used to organize unions, Because I'm in the mix, I have to take sides.
I'm sure that the Partnership, the Carl Paladinos, the Gerry Goldbergs, who are all friends, would like to see the Council reduced, downsized and controlled. And the only person who stands in the way is Jim Pitts.
Not that I'm not cooperative. It's just that I raise questions or I've disagreed with them and maybe I am intimidating. I don't necessarily try to force people to do anything. I make recommendations. I'm a public speaker. I come from a family of preachers. I'm passionate. Maybe they don't like that.
But the issue is this. I think there is an agenda to establish some form of regional government here which would involve a variation or such on Joel Giambra's "no handout, no bailout." And I think that Tony Masiello has agreed to do that. Rudnick, Goldberg with his drive-by editorials, Paladino and everybody else are hellbent on that, and that's what this agenda is all about.Buffalo as a tax colony
One of the things that "no handout, no bailout" prescribes is a reduction of the Council. And in that report, it says that the minority community may be hurt by this. But that's acceptable. And, as you can see, with this reduction, with nine coming from the Buffalo News, with a focus on the African-American seats, even the traditional Council presidency, indicates the lack of respect that I think they're showing to the African-American community and ultimately the lack of respect to the city.
Now I support regionalism, but I know what regionalism really means. I think the problem that exists now is there's a perverted sense of regionalism that's being purveyed by Giambra in "no handout, no bailout." He talks about no sharing, no regional sharing, no regional cooperation, it's really nothing more than a typical fundamental reengineering proposal based upon a corporate model, where the county becomes a manager and the city contracts for services and you pay for them. That's a strict corporate model. That's not regionalism.
This first salvo to implement "no handout, no bailout," is really the basis of regionalizing, contract regionalizing, turning the city into a minimal city, turning it into a tax colony, and ultimately developing a stranglehold by certain members of the business community on the political process.
If you look at the changes that are taking place within the city of Buffalo, in its population and demographically, yes we've lost population. But when you begin to look at the number of African-Americans, Hispanics and other people of color, if you put them all together, that population is reflective of anywhere from 50 to 52, 53% of the population. So as they are reflective in the elective office as part of that plurality that these offices provide for, with a mixture of at-large and district seats.
This move is a direct salvo to cut that political representation off. I think it relates to having control of that council, minimizing the kind of political representation that some may feel is undesirable, and certainly the attack on Jim Pitts. It's like, "We can't have him as mayor." Well, nobody's asked me whether or not I want to be mayor. And the issue is this: they don't have to go through all of this. They don't have to wreck the city to try and get rid of me.
People say "Mister Pitts, what does this all mean?"
I say, "Well, it could be good things, under regionalism, it could be good things if the city were going to be the principal focus of the region."
If you look at Pittsburgh, if you look at even a place like Boston or Chicago, or even some of your smaller cities like Rochester, the regional discussion that they're having is to make those cities stronger. If you take the recent merger of Louisville and Jefferson County, what they did is they took a rural region, which had sort of a rural agrarian government, having justices of the peace that still did things, and they expanded the city. They took all those rural areas and made them council districts.
That's what Houston and LA did.
Absolutely. And they made a regional mayor. In other words, they made a mayor of a larger regional Louisville area.
Here, it's the opposite. What they want to do with the city of Buffalo is they want to contract its services with the county, making it essentially a tax colony.
They're not addressing the issue of how are we going to deal with poverty. How are we going to break down the barriers of not only the physical space but services between the city and the suburbs? How are we going to begin to deal with some of those issues that keep children from the city from going to suburban schools? Or vice versa.
And how do we begin to deal with just the question of the economy of scale of providing services, because the County of Erie does not pick up garbage. If you look at the sheriff's department, it doesn't have the expertise and the resources that you have within the Buffalo Police Department. If you begin to look at county government, the biggest thing that they provide right now is social services.
Last fall when we had our greatest fiscal crisis, what does Joel Giambra do? He raises the taxes, county taxes, for city residents, and keeps everybody else's taxes in the suburban areas the same level. So what did that mean? That means, as a tax colony, they're taxing the city of Buffalo to keep the costs of taxes artificially low in suburban areas.
So who's benefitting from this? The city becomes a tax colony, and there you go: minimal city.
Giving away the water supply
If you consider the proposal that Mr. Masiello is now considering to turn our water division over to the county rather than having it a public-private partnership with a private company, what they're proposing to do, the county has put on the table a very simple proposal for themselves. They say, "Well, we can manage your water system better than it's being managed now. But there are several things you have to do." What is the first thing?Development
"You have to give us the system. Now, that system provides revenue and we have to make sure that there's enough revenue and enough revenue stream there. Because we want to develop this regional water system and many of the areas in the suburban system do not have the type of water system that the city of Buffalo has, and we need to develop a treatment plant and we need to modernize and do all these things, what we want to do is, we want to be able to charge enough as a result of this revenue stream in order to do these things."
So the first thing they're saying is, "Give us your system and we're going to raise the rates."
By the way, if you look at their proposal they're talking about charging different rate for residents in the city and a different rate for residents in the suburbs. And you know where the highest rate is: it's in the city, versus the suburbs.
Then they say, "The other thing is that once you do this, you have to then be responsible for certain capital costs. So, in other words, we can not necessarily take this problem off your hands and expect to carry all these costs when it comes to capital improvement."
So already they're asking us to give our revenue stream up, raise the rates, and then when it comes to risk or improvements over a series of years, or whenever it's going to happen, they still want the city to pay for it.
Every thing that happens, Bruce, under this regionalism, puts the city as a minimal city, as a tax colony. Not as a city that is the jewel of the area, the hub of the region, the focus.
I often challenge those who say, "Well, you know we want to attract businesses to the region. And if it's in the region it's good for the city and the region." No, not true. There has to be place-based business development, economic development, when it comes to issues of poverty, transition, disinvestment in the city. You can't say "We're going to recruit businesses or do economic development for the region and they all go to Amherst and it's going to help Buffalo."City and county
I'm not saying don't recruit for Amherst. Amherst and Buffalo have different needs. I often get very upset when companies move outside of Buffalo and they go to suburban areas as a result of getting economic shuffling loan from the ECIDA or something like that, and they still use the name Buffalo: "We're located in Buffalo. But it's not a Buffalo address."
What you have here is not a regionalism that puts the city first, that offers place-based economic development and development overall, when it comes to quality of life or neighborhood development.
Business leaders sometimes say, "Maybe we should dissolve the city. It's a lot of duplication of services."At-large councilmembers
I say, "All right, stop right there." I say, "We would dissolve and then what would happen?"
"The county would take it over."
I say, "What's the purpose of county government?"
"Well...well, um, they..."
I say, "You still got Amherst, they got a board, they got a supervisor. Kenmore's got a board, supervisor, police chief. You got all these places that are there." I say, "What is county government's purpose?"
"Well..."
"How much does it cost for county government right now?" I say, "It's like $1.2 billion. If you add the city's largesse to that, maybe another billion dollars, including a lot of misery perhaps. That's two point something billion dollars, maybe three. You ever see an economy of scale? How you going to provide services?"
You know, if you got rid of county government, $1.2 billion worth of cost, goes away. Kenmore wouldn't have to pay county taxes. Elma pays none anyway. You wouldn't have to pay essentially two sales taxes, one under the old formula and an extra one percent sales tax which they've been stealing. When it comes to city residents you certainly wouldn't have to pay county taxes. It goes away. Sheriffs don't come into the city anyway when it comes to services.
Joel might say, "Then we'll give you back those social services." Well, guess what: most of those people that are getting social services that you call problematic, they actually live in the suburbs.
The revenue that the city would get to provide those services would be regional and if you consider the areas that have the greatest need, which are in the city, who knows those neighborhoods better? You got social workers saying, "Oh, I'm not going in that community. I'm not going there."
So the issue, if you talk about Medicaid reimbursement and all that other stuff, we're able to deal with those issues because we cut off $1.2 billion worth of cost from county government. That's what I would say.
If you talk about cooperation, where does cooperation have to take place? It has to take place between Amherst and Buffalo. Kenmore and Alden. County government is supposed to facilitate this stuff? How they facilitating stuff and they're setting up a superstructure that's going to charge you more for services? So you're putting together a county government, a $1.2 billion superstructure that's going to provide duplicative services, that's gonna cost you more. Get rid of it.
We've give up our bed tax for the arena, which was a county-city kind of thing. We've given up our sales tax. I think the News ran an article that shows clearly that the city of Buffalo is losing. We've given up the convention center. We've given up our development rights to the waterfront. If you begin to look at what Masiello is doing now, he's dismantling city government to give to the county. What do we gain?
Joel has not done any regionalism. I think one of the reasons that the News is pushing this downsizing of the Council and reaching into the Council so deeply to cause this problem is because they're frantic about next year when somebody is going to raise the question in the suburbs, "Well, what has Joel Giambra done with this regionalism?"
The area, the place that they want to provide the example is the city of Buffalo. So that's why Masiello and Gumbi are pushing this thing with the water, so he can go, "Ah, we done this, this is regionalism." So he can run for reelection.
If you look at the Erie County Industrial Development proposals that he's made about developing a consensus, you know, those folks in the suburbs say, "Get out of here." Susan Grelick says, "I ain't giving up the Amherst IDA." Gabersak ain't giving up Cheektowaga. They're not going to give up all these IDAs Everybody wants their autonomy. It's not going to happen.
Regionalism, metropolitanization, amalgamation, all these terms that are used, in those places where it has occurred, it has been based upon a consensus. They're trying to do things here based on drive-by editorials and destruction, and it's just not going to work.
Why have at-large members in the Common Council. What's the logic of that?Reforming Buffalo: the Kenefick Commission
The at-large members rise above the parochialism.
A district councilmember will fight to the very bitter end for their communities and their districts because that's their purpose. When you have all those district people in a room, they're all going to fight, and they're all going to fight like hell to get whatever. They're not going to give an inch.
So what happens is that the Council president, who stands even further above the council members at-large, will allow the at-large members to go in and to broker compromises with those district councilmen, because they're not wedded so tightly to their bases. Their interest is more in terms of the city's interest. If that fails, which it has, then the Council president comes in. The Council president is able to not only broker, but to set policies when it comes to committee assignments, when it comes to committee referrals, when it comes to relationships with the mayor.
I'm able to broker with the administration if, say, Betty Jean Grant is saying, "I'm not moving until I get my new bathroom and kitchen over at Roosevelt Park!" And people are just telling her, "No, no, no, no, no." So what the council president will do is say, "All right, Betty, come to my office. We'll talk about this." So we'll sit down and talk. The council president has experience, has relationships with people, even that the mayor doesn't have. So he makes a few phone calls. Done deal. Over. "Betty, it's done. It'll be on the council agenda at the next meeting." "Well, Mister President, I'm supporting this block grant program because I think it's good for my district and the city." It's over.
Can you imagine Congress or the state legislature without having a speaker or a president or someone like a Sheldon Silver, who's able to broker the parochial interests?
Having a council president elected from within, is no different from a majority leader. They're tied to the votes of those councilmembers. So if you look at the all district plan that they're proposing, that white coalition will rule forever. [The proposed nine-member all-district council would have the council president one of the nine district councilpersons.]
The council president now, as an independently elected person, appoints all committees, all the chairmen. Joe Golombek is head of the reapportionment committee because he came to me and said "Jim, I have an interest in this." He got the people he wanted on the committee there too.
As things are now, if the council president is not able to broker or negotiate, he can always break something with his vote. Or break something with the policy leverage that he has when it comes to many issues.
But if you talk about a council president from within, there's no independence.
So the importance of the at-large is simply to represent a broader interest which is usually the city's broader interest, and making decisions and policies that are not just tied to parochial interests.
We're in this situation now, and perhaps this is a portent of the future, we're in this situation now because Tony Masiello reached in there and touched Rose LoTempio. If you have a council that he totally controls in terms of districts, what's going to happen there? If you have a council president that's chosen from within, what's going to happen there?
By the way, the six white councilmembers that Rose is with wanted to dump her as majority leader. They wanted to dump her, and the person who supported her was Jim Pitts. I was able to use the African-American council members in order to get her votes. And they are incensed because they didn't want to support Rose. I was the one that convinced them that Rose would be a good majority leader.
So do you take this as a personal betrayal?
Yes. Absolutely. And that's how I've reacted.
The city of Buffalo at the turn of the 20th century had the same problems as many cities like Chicago and Pittsburgh and others had. They had municipal corruption, they had unsanitary conditions, they had different types of problems that were municipal problems. Government was one of them. Talk about Tammany Hall and all that other stuff.Responsibilities and obligations
However, as part of the Progressive movement, if you go back to William Jennings Bryan and you come up to Teddy Roosevelt and all those people, the Progressive movement was really a political movement that was designed, or at least used as one of its planks, the elimination of municipal corruption.
The city of Buffalo used to have a commission government. You had two or three people who were running everything. You had political bosses running everything. When it came to contracts there was no bidding. At one time, just before the turn of the century, when Grover Cleveland was around, we had 27 council members. Grover Cleveland rode to prominence because he was Mister Veto. And what did he do? He went into a gang of council members that used to have favorite contractors and people that they would give contracts to. Even as it related to patronage and everything else, it was just blatant. They would broker deals on the floor. What made Grover Cleveland great is he came in and started challenging that.
The Kenefick Commission was designed to deal with that. It was established by in 1926, and they studied city government for about a year and a half, two years. Kenefick was a judge, police commissioner, very prominent person. What they did very simply and summarily, they said, "We need to develop a system of checks and balances. We understand the political realm. We also understand what good government is. And good government should be government that is close to the people. Close in the sense that it provides accountability and checks and balances.'
Now, what does that mean? What did they do? The Kenefick Commission came up with a unique structure. One of the few in the country. There's not many cities that have what we have in the city of Buffalo. You have a strong mayor and you have a strong council. And what does that mean? That means that, and this is how we usually say it: the mayor proposes and the council disposes. So there's a direct relationship there. And the council president's is to serve as a broker between the two, as a foil in some cases, but as broker between the two, between a body of councilmembers and the executive. As an independently elected official he or she is supposed to run the meetings, provide policy, and begin to act as a broker between the two.
Of course I'm with the Council. But if there's an issue that has to rise above the parochialism of the council, the council president is the final arbiter on that side. Then he takes it to the mayor in the sense that, "Well, Mr. Mayor, this will go, this won't go. I think you should support this or veto this. If there's a need for you, Mr. Mayor, to propose something and you need the support"–he comes to the council president and goes to the body, majority leader, committee, et cetera.
So they developed a check and a balance. The mayor's stronger, but it's a strong council because under the charter, and even under the new charter, the council president can appoint a charter revision commission. The charter used to say that if the mayor goes out of town, say if the mayor went to Toronto for the night—he would have to notify the council president, the city clerk, which then puts everybody on notice, and the council president then becomes acting mayor while he's gone. The new charter revision process took that out. However what still exists is the fact that if the mayor is not able to perform his duties or serve, the council president then steps in and becomes mayor, and if he decides, he becomes the acting mayor until the next election.
Under this new plan, this all-district plan, the council president is chosen from within and it's supposed to rotate. I would presume that under the existing charter with this local law, whoever's in that office would then serve. If Tony Masiello wasn't able to perform his duties or had to leave office, whoever that person was or is would take that place.
But there's no continuity. You don't know if that person would have the experience. You don't know if that person would have the city-wide interest as a council president does. Because a council president has to be accountable to the whole city, has to go and run for election.
That's what the Kenefick Commission felt was important, because you had such a parochial body of council members and commission members where there was no check and a balance even to them. So the council president acts as a foil to the mayor and when it comes to the council as an independently elected person. Because I can take a vote which does not have be wedded to my supporters on that council but wedded to a broader interest.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is that the Kenefick Commission developed was an independently elected city comptroller. The city comptroller has the ability to audit everybody, without having any kind of political ramifications or allegiances or ties to the council or to the mayor. So he's a strong, independently-elected official. He has the ability to do investigations, the ability to audit, the ability to raise questions, the ability to even not approve the expenditure of certain funds.
If you look at the charter, the council can cause investigations, the council can raise issues, the council can issue subpoenas, can do all of those things. However, under this new plan, all of the things that were been developed by the Kenefick Commission are now questioned.
I have been talking to the corporation counsel about many of these issues. Obviously these issues cannot be discussed as along as race is the fundamental issue. The issue has to be discussed, and this is where we're developing as part any effort if this thing gets on the ballot, we're developing good government pamphlets that we're going to show where these issues are jeopardized and these issues are important when it comes to good government, good governance, and the checks and balances with the mayor.
I think it's bad. It goes against everything that was done as part of the Kenefick Commission, and certainly as a regional kind of thing that the Buffalo News is saying is good for the region, it shows you that regionalism is not good government in this case.
You quoted somebody saying,"Jim is always doing things for the East Side, the black community." I do things for the whole community. South Buffalo, North Buffalo, East Buffalo. My record is clear. The Buffalo News does not put my record in there. I've developed all kinds of projects.Black folk always get hit first
I had a big presentation yesterday with the Erie County Industrial Development Agency to change the Buffalo Forge plant on Broadway to an ecological industrial park. Have a national team that's coming in, Fox and Fowle, premier green design team from New York City that did Three and Four Times Square.
I've done all kinds of things. But the Buffalo News is always tried to turn me into this Snagley Whiplash of the city of Buffalo. It's easy because of who I am and what I am. But I've tried to do my best for the city of Buffalo and my record is clear.
It's not just the black community. But if you take the things that I've attempted to do, those things that have been the most impactful, where the greatest need has been, that has been in the African-American community. In terms of developing new housing, rehabilitating housing, taking the old War Memorial stadium and turning that into one of premier amateur sports facilities in the country. This is where you've had the greatest need.
But by the same token I helped develop the old First World community center at Our Lady of Perpetual Health when they closed down the school and the church almost, and helped build the new one that Rose LoTempio's name is in. I've worked with the Lovejoy community. I've worked with the university community. I can name all of them. And I have been cooperative and in those cases where things have been held up or things have not, there's been a problem, I'll come in and work as a problem solver. And use that council that way.
Now, a lot of times, if questions need to be raised or people are not listening when it comes to certain issues, I'll use that floor to raise those questions so that I can get their attention. I focus on constituent concerns. The Buffalo News says "Well, y'know, those councilmembers should be part-time. Y'know, I think there's been too much dependence by the public on councilmembers doing constituent stuff. They need to have a broader view."
Well that's b.s. Constituent service is the basis of the democracy, the republic democracy that we have in this country.
People don't want their congressman to go down there and just sit there in front of C-SPAN. They want him to bring home the bacon. You gotta bring home some bacon, Bruce, and that's what it's about.
I don't have a problem with serving constituents and having to get out and go and visit people and go with their problems. That's what we're there for. We're not a professional group. We're representatives, we're elected representatives and that's what we're supposed to do.
I think part of this thing about doing part-time, which is an old issue, if you go back to the '60s, and when Jimmy Griffin was first running, there was a feeling that council members were too part time. They weren't spending a lot of time down there dealing with constituent problems or answering calls or spending time to find out what was happening in the communities. Many of them were lawyers, were professionals, real estate brokers, and they were doing a lot of their work on city time.
So one of the things that we did—Delmar Mitchell and George Arthur were two of the people who were primarily responsible for this—was to talk about raising the salaries of elected officials and opening up the door when it came to issues of election reforms, you know, financial reforms, and all of those issues that were raised at that time, to make offices accessible to people rather than those who would have the most resources and the ability to run for office, to make it so you could affordably run for an office and then once you got there you would be able to have, for lack of a better term, a living wage in order to spend the time there.
If you go back 40 years ago, Delmar Mitchell used to tell me, "Hell, we'd come in on a Tuesday at 1:35, the meeting's at two, we'd sit in a room back here, say, 'We gotta do a, b, c, d, e, f, g,' go in there and do it and we're gone!" It was government, it was part-time.
I'm shocked that the News would try to send us back 40, 45 years, Bruce. They have no idea of what we do.
And even if you consider, a lot of people don't realize, even if you consider the state legislature, which is still on an agrarian schedule, they're part-time. Do we get good government from them? You got three people that run the government up there. I think that there's been a call for change there, where they would spend more time in Albany rather than just trying to do time in the compressed period of time and then having late budgets. And if you look at many of those legislators, they do other things. They're really part-time in many cases.
We don't want that. I think government should be close to the people.
When I stand at the urinal, people say, "Hey, ain't you Pitts?"
I say, "Yeah, how you doin'?"
I get blamed for what President Bush does, what Pataki does, whoever they have a problem with, they see me as a personification of an elected official or government official. And that's the way it should be. Because I think that local government should be the closest and the most accountable and the most responsible to the people.
Some people don't like Charley Fisher, 'cause all he talks about is minority businesses, and Antoine Thompson is always talking about minority business. And they come to me and say, "How come they always talking about minority businesses?" I say, "It's no different than Mary Martino talking about the LTV site in Hickory Woods." Or it's no different than Joe Golombek and others talking about what they talk about. That's what people do. What's wrong with that?
That's what democracy is.
You've been getting a lot of heat for saying,"I don't want you taking the food out of my children's mouth" in a discussion about downsizing the Council.
That was a response to the personal attacks that I had been getting and being blamed for by council members. A lot of those things have not been said publicly, but they'd been said privately as people come over.
I get blamed for all kinds of things. You know, "He's a tyrant. He shouldn't be having a car. He shouldn't be having all those perks. He shouldn't be making that kind of money."
I work hard for what I do. I also believe in the public trust. Everything I do is based upon that. I was responding to some of those criticisms, saying in a different kind of way rather than saying it the way I'd like to say it. And that's what it was. I was responding to that. I said, "Look, I took it personal."
Because what they were saying was personal, very personal. So they knew what I was talking about.
What do you think is going to happen with this?Family matters
I think Masiello is going to sign it. And I think we're going to have a tremendous outpouring in African-American and Hispanic communities and we're going to kick the shit out of it.
What a lot of people don't realize is, Jimmy Griffin tried to get rid of Delmar Mitchell, George Arthur and Herb Bellamy. They tried to get rid of the five at-large members. We took it to the streets and won.
That hearing: I got blamed for kicking people out. Here I'm in the sweat box. I didn't know how many people were going to show up. Nobody expected that turnout. We expected a turnout, but not that.
It would have been greater. Say you had it at the Convention Center. If we had said, "Let's take it to the Convention Center," I think that Convention Center would have been full.
People who don't like Jim Pitts in the black community said, "This is wrong. We don't like you, Mister Pitts, but they shouldn't be doing that. Black folk always get hit first. Why they pickin' on us?"
I read Donny Esmonde's relent, his backing off. As I sat in my chair—now you know I got good peripheral vision—I saw Donny Esmonde sitting over there. He doesn't speak to me. Usually he'll turn his back or do something like that. He chews gum. He looked like a cow chewing cud. He couldn't believe it. His eyes were big as saucers. He couldn't believe it.
They just kept coming in. When people told me,"People are downstairs," I said, "Those who are here, if you speak, and if you want to leave, would you leave so we can bring people in." So they were bringing people in. He was flabbergasted. What he was also flabbergasted with was what they were saying and how they said it.
I received an email from a woman who blamed me, "Mr Pitts, that hearing was an embarrassment to the city of Buffalo. Why did you allow that to happen?" Those people spoke from their heart. Now you had a few crazies there.
Always do.
Always do. But even they spoke against it. Except Jimmy Griffin.
I'm sure that man was just overwhelmed. Never seen anything like that. And then when you talk to people, these are just ordinary people.
What I try to tell them, I say, "Look, it's not about Jim Pitts. Maybe I shouldn't have said that about taking the food out of my mouth. That ain't the issue." The issue is, if you look at African-Americans in this country, they were the last ones allowed to vote. And they fought and died for the right to vote.
In our lifetime.
In our lifetime. If you go back to even 1866 and look at the Civil Rights Act of 1866, it was designed to deal with antidiscrimination. If you look at the Voting Rights Act, if you look at all the Roosevelt to Truman to JFK. JFK is the one that coined the phrase "affirmative action." It's all designed to deal with the issue of discrimination. Now all of a sudden, "This is not a racial issue, it's democracy." Gimme a break! That's what we hear all the time. And folk out there are just incensed that this would happen.
People come to government for accountability and some method of appeal. They see their government—which already has a history of discrimination in the fire department, discrimination in hiring in the police department, segregated schools, when it comes to civil service you can count the number of black folk on your hand—and now it's being done with their elected representation.
People are frightened to death. They're saying, "Wait a minute. I don't know if I want to stay in Buffalo. I don't know if this is right. Especially if I can't get a job, or if I go to a job and I'm on the job, can't get a promotion, or I can't get to the suburbs because the busses don't run through my community. I don't go to the Philharmonic because they don't play the kind of music that I want. Or I can't do this. I do have the right to vote to get some representation. And now they're taking that away."
It's passionate, Bruce. And you know what? I didn't go out and beat the hustings. I didn't go out and go to every church on Sunday like we do on a campaign. This developed a life of its own.
On my way over here, I heard, "Yo, Pitts, we goin' beat this!"
Now, on the other side, I've had people call me who supported me for years, on the majority side, And they said, "Well, Jim, watch what you're saying about that racial thing." I say, "Okay, I'm watchin' it." They say, "There's a lot of people that like you and love you but they don't like what you're saying." I say, "Don't let 'em take it personal. Don't let 'em take it personal. Because the issue is all of us, working together. And even if you give some consideration that maybe that is economically induced—"
Somebody said that the appearances are the reality. This is the reality that people are dealing with.
I think that from that point of view it's going to be a referendum on the future of this city and the future of regionalism. The Rudnicks and others, it's my understanding that they are already geared up for their slick ads, and I guess they're going to show Jim Pitts screaming on TV and probably show some of those uglyass Buffalo News pictures that they put in there [see Truth to order on page 1] and, you know, he's the target.
My son was making fun of the picture in the News the other day. He said, "Dad, you look like the Sphinx. They waited till you got your finger pointed. You look like you were angry." Because he was there. He said, "They waited 'till you got a little angry and then they took the picture." And he said, "Why did they do that, and then put it on the front page?"Vultures on dry bones
He's only 14.
He said, "Dad, they don't like you."
I said, "Well, that's putting it very simply." I said, "Who?"
He said, "It's the white people don't like you. Black people like you. They love you." He says, "But white people don't like you."
And I says, "What do you think it is?"
He says, "I don't know." He says, "I don't know."
So that's it. It's bad.
They're shooting at me. I'm used to that. But those are things that I have an interest in. I've already told my wife that if something happens and I'm no longer Council president, I already know what I'm going to do.The Buffalo News
What are you going to do?
I'm going to develop the East Side. I'm going to do development projects within the city. Actually, if you take most of the developers who come through, I've helped them develop their projects. I'm going to develop my own.
Maybe you can get an $800,000 roof and then buy the building from the city for a dollar.
No, I wouldn't do it that way. See, the problem you have in this city, is that we've become a welfare region when it comes to development. If you look at the economic shuffling between an Amherst and all the IDAs, you have five or six developers who know how to take advantage of those things. What happened is that we killed our market in this area. The greatest area of prosperity in America passed us by a little bit because we killed our market.
If a person comes in here and they want to start a business, they can open up. The problem is, the competition may be offered or given a subsidy from some level of government because you got some politician that wants to say, "Oh we doing economic development." That's what's killing this area. What we need to do, is open it up. It's like an old Victorian mansion that's been standing on the hill for like a hundred years, and the curtains are pulled and it's all dusty and it's musty inside. Everybody's walking around, nobody's doing anything to open it up. Open those windows, those doors, and let some people come in here.
You had a bunch of people come in here who wanted to bid on the school construction project. Teams were put together from all over the country, from the world, internationally. I've talked to those teams. They said, "Well, Mr. President, we think this an exciting opportunity for the city of the Buffalo, business opportunity, community development, improve the school system, et cetera." And as we talked, someone would say, "But, off the record, we hear that this deal is going to Ciminelli."
I'd say, "I hadn't heard that. But I would hope that it wouldn't."
Then after getting into the process, when people were going through their interviews, all the machinations of people, certain contractors getting together with others and going back and forth, et cetera, guess who gets it: Ciminelli.
I don't have anything against Ciminelli. I don't have anything against Montanti. I may have a little bit against Carl Paladino. I don't have anything against any of these people. But what has happened is that they've clamped on this area. They're like vultures on a valley of dry bones. And the problem that we have is that we have not opened up this area.
And when you begin to look at the Partnership and you look at how Rudnick has acted like a public official while being a in a private organization, acting in a very public fashion, getting involved in political issues, supporting candidates, driving this "Buffalo Niagara" when we live in Erie kind of thing, without having any kind of accountability to the public—that has put us in a position where we are today. Where we can't make a decision when it comes to many of these issues or we can't attract companies because they read headlines that are based upon things that may be real or not. Or the culture of coming in and trying to get a loan, trying to navigate all of the A,B,C, D, E, F, G hoops, and then, even before you get there, you've got to go see the county executive or you've got to go see the mayor or you've got to go see this person before you're able to just come in and say, "Look, I want to do something."
You've had a few developers who've come in who haven't gone that route and they say, "This is a wonderful area." They haven't tried to get involved politically. But they only go so far. Then, next thing you know, you got folks sending them a ticket or trying to get them involved in something. I think that what we've got to do is open it up.
The other thing we've got to do is we've got to change the mindset of the Buffalo News because it's killing the area. You may have had some criticism of Murray Light, but under Margaret Sullivan and Gerry Goldberg it's a disaster for the city of Buffalo. That's my view. It's a disaster.Neighborhoods
Why?
I think that Gerry Goldberg is crazy. I think he's nuts. I also think that they're so hellbent on pushing this perverted sense of regionalism—perverted in the sense that it doesn't raise the city up. It kind of like says, "The county of Erie is an imperial county."
The county of Erie was chartered in '63. It was done to grow the suburbs. It was done as a contradistinction to the Democratic stronghold of the city. It was designed to be a Republican bastion of urbanism and growth in the suburban area.
What would you like to see different?
I would love to see neighborhoods become a priority rather than your typical urban machine, which really necessitates the development of closeness between elected officials and the business community because people are so concerned about money and reelection and being able to cater to the news media.
I would like to see neighborhoods, communities, and quality of life be the priority. That's what I'd like to see change. Rather than the expediency of government by press release, raising money, catering to the business interests, and strictly business interests, which in some cases do not represent the best interests of communities.
That's not to the exclusion of business and economic development. But I think all of those things contained within the priority of neighborhoods' quality of life makes it much more meaningful, because then you're talking about providing resources and services to the people who really make the difference in a city. That's what I would do. I would change that because right now everything is geared toward business interests.
click here for links to an earlier interview with James Pitts, focussing on key issues in rebuilding Buffalo