6 March 2003
Buffalo goons
by Bruce Jackson
On Tuesday, March 4, eight members of the Buffalo Common Council, in a move spearheaded by Councilmember Rosemary
LoTempio, tabled the peace resolution the Council was to have voted on. The resolution had been submitted by Council President James Pitts and Councilmember Antoine Thompson. It got really ugly. Anyone who wanted to see why there is so much gridlock in the Council had only to be there for yesterday's session. Some of those people seem just to hate each other's guts, and some don't seem to have a clue what is going on. Those folks are all on the public payroll. Everybody who lives in Buffalo is owed a refund.
No problem
Just before the council session I stopped in James Pitts's office to ask him some formal questions about how the discussion and vote would go. Antoine Thompson was there, so I followed him in.
Rose LoTempio, Thompson said, was ready to support the resolution but she didn't like the title, "Resolution Opposing the War in Iraq."
"What title would she like?" Pitts said.
"She didn't say," Thompson said.
"No problem. Tell her to tell us what title she'd like and we'll put it on the resolution. Bring it up on the floor and we'll take care of it. What else?"
"Joe Golombek and David Franczyk say they'll vote for it but they want certain amendments making it specific to Buffalo."
"Sure," Pitts said. "No problem. Why didn't they say that before? We could have had it all ready by now."
"I don't know," Thompson said.
"Tell them all that there's no problem. We'll just change the title and bring in those amendments on the floor."
"Okay," Thompson said, without moving.
"Is that it?" Pitts said.
"I'd like us to set up a committee on consumer protection."
Pitts's looked at his watch. It was one minute before two. The Council session in the big chamber across the hall was scheduled to start at two. "Don't we do that in...." He named one of their committees.
"Consumer protection is really important and it should have its own committee," Thompson said.
"Well, we'll talk about it," Pitts said, "but now we gotta get over there."
The Council at work
The first hour or so of the meeting went smoothly and pretty much on autopilot. The clerk read the number and name of an item, Pitts or one of the members said what should be done with it, they did some fast mumbo-jumbo and moved on to the next item.
The only items I remember any extended discussion about were
—Antoine Thompson talking about how they pass resolutions in which construction contracts are to go to minority contractors but by the time the contracts are assigned the minority contractors are cut out,
—Marc Coppola asking some city department head the same question three times and not seeming to get it any one of those times, and just about all of them going on at great length why collaboration with the county was a lousy idea,
—and (agenda item 83, submitted by LoTempio) most of them talking about how good an idea it is to alter the signage on Republic Street in south Buffalo to read "Gene McCarthy Way."
When I read that item on the agenda I was surprised that after all these years the city of Buffalo would be honoring the guy whose surprise showing in the 1968 New Hampshire primary convinced LBJ that he should drop out of the presidential race, but after the speechifying went on for a while I realized that it was a different Gene McCarthy entirely, some local guy who was so important or beloved all those council members could happily agree to give him his Way.
It was all very sweet and harmonious. Sweetness and harmony would go down the toilet when they got to agenda item 84, "Opposing The War in Iraq."
Joe Golombek finds a hitch
About twenty minutes before they got to agenda item 84 Joe Golombek got out of his chair and came around the room and handed me a sheet by Franczyk with six whereases, one now-therefore-be-it-resolved and one be-it-finally-resolved.
"It's because the president won't let us add this amendment that this is going to be tabled," Golombek said.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." He went back to his seat.
I read Franczyk's amendments. They seemed reasonable enough.
I got Golombek's attention and he came back over to where I was sitting and I said, "These are good amendments. I'm sure everybody would agree to them."
"But the president is forcing us to table the discussion."
"Joe, if this is tabled until the next council meeting it's useless. That's two weeks from now. The whole point is to get these things out before Bush goes to war, not afterwards. It's got to be today."
"I understand that," he said.
I told Thompson's what Golombek had said.
"No," Thompson said, "that's wrong. We're working on it right now. We're combining the original resolution and Franczyk's amendments. We're working it out. I think we're okay. It'll be introduced, we'll say we have this set of amendments, and we'll vote on the combined resolution."
For the next 20 minutes, when there wasn't something he felt moved to talk about, Thompson tweaked the two texts.
LoTempio on the warpath
The clerk called item 84, "Opposing The War in Iraq," and Rosemary LoTempio immediately set about killing the whole thing.
Hardly had the clerk finished naming the item when she made a motion to table. Nick Bonifacio immediately seconded it. It was one of those moves that happened so fast you just knew it had all been worked out beforehand.
Pitts seemed really surprised. He's usually canny about sabotage, but I think he was distracted by the conciliatory messages LoTempio, Golombek and Franczyk had sent him just before the session started.
He tried to amend her tabling motion and to get a vote on that. Beverly Jean Grant said she wanted to amend the original motion. She was ready to submit the version of the motion that incorporated David Franczyk's amendments.
LoTempio would have none of it. She insisted her tabling motion had to be voted on immediately. Mary Martino said that since LoTempio's motion had been seconded by Bonifacio, the motion didn't even need a vote, the resolution was already tabled. All I could think at that moment was: "All these years on the Council and Mary Martino thinks resolutions are passed by getting a second."
LoTempio did a lot of yelling and clenched-teeth-close-to-the-mike snarling at Pitts during the back-and-forth that occupied the next seven or eight minutes. I was sitting right behind her and I watched the veins and muscles in her neck bulge in rage. That rage is astonishing. I don't know if it's just the rage betrayers often have against the people they've betrayed or if it's something deeper and darker. Whatever it was, her affect transcended anything that transpired in the Council Chamber that afternoon.
LoTempio then said "motion to adjourn." A male voice, I'm not sure whose, seconded her. Pitts said her motion to adjourn was out of order.
LoTempio: "Well what is in order, Mr. President? A motion to adjourn is never out of order."
They were both right: a motion to adjourn is never out of order (unless it has the effect of dissolving the body), but it can only be made if the person chairing the session recognizes the speaker and accepts the motion, which Pitts hadn't done. Apparently, the authors of Roberts' Rules of Order are of the opinion that meetings should not be subject to nondiscussible termination votes every time someone dislikes the present discussion, as was clearly what was going on with LoTempio. She wanted that discussion killed, by whatever parliamentary means she could figure or find.
Marc Coppola
Marc Coppola then chimed in with several procedural technical points that he asked the Council's lawyer to clarify. I just couldn't believe he thought them up himself. He's always so many steps behind and so clueless, I was sure he'd been scripted by some of the more Machiavellian members of the Council.
A little earlier, when he had that guy from the city department going over the same thing three times, I saw four members of the Council rolling their eyes. They weren't rolling their eyes to anybody in particular; they were rolling them to anybody. It was like as if were saying: "Look, I'm sitting next to this guy but I'm not responsible for him, you know?"
Marc Coppola got the job only because his cousin Al left a safe seat on the Common Council for a state office he couldn't hold and the local Democrat party figured anybody with Al's last name would get Al's seat, and Marc was available, so they ran him and he got Al's seat, just like they figured. That's maybe a good indication of what a bunch of cynical bastards those political bosses can be.
If a toad runs against him in the next primary or general election everyone in Delaware District should vote for it. It won't come up with anything smart, but then, neither will it be half as lame as he is on issues that matter. The important work of that office—getting the garbage trucks to come to your house when they passed you by—the secretaries take care of anyway.
Sinking the knife
After Coppola was informed, LoTempio said, "Can we have a roll, Mr President, or does not a majority still rule?" Martino
immediately chimed in "Roll call."
Pitts knew they had him beat. You can't amend a motion to table and he hadn't been able to bull his way through that one. LoTempio had beat him to the draw: he'd recognized her out of politeness before recognizing Grant to make the amendment, and LoTempio had immediately sunk the knife with her motion to table.
So they voted. The clerk called the name and each Council member responded. This is how it vote went:
Bonifacio
Yes
Coppola
Yes
Davis
No war
Fischer
Yes
Fontana
Yes
Franczyk
Yes to stop the war
Golombek
Yes
Grant
No
LoTempio
Yeah
Martino
Yes
Pitts
No war
Thompson
No
(Beverly Gray: was absent)
After which the clerk said, "Eight to four."
And after that Pitts said, "Let's move on."
The weirdest thing about the vote
The weirdest moment in that vote was when David Franczyk voted to table but he did it by saying "Yes to stop war." Even the clerk, who ordinarily moves on at his own pace, unimpeded by cheering or yelling from the audience or any other disturbance, stopped for a moment trying to figure out that one. Franczyk's voting to table while yelling that he was voting for peace is like someone who says "yes" while nodding his head from side to side. I wanted to tell him: "Don't you know you can't do both those things at once?"
The most megalomaniacal utterance after the vote
"Until the day comes that I'm informed by the Pentagon as to exactly what's going on," Rose LoTempio told Buffalo News reporter Brian Meyer, "I'll continue to support the men and women who are protecting our country."
Whatever happened to Charlie Fisher?
I called Charlie Fisher the next day to ask why he supported Rose LoTempio in her move to prevent any discussion of the peace resolution but I couldn't find him.
Charlie has come up with some pretty off-the-wall schemes in recent years (he introduced a resolution backing an 800-foot-high anti-abortion pagoda on Buffalo's waterfront and he was running around insisting that Arab-run groceries were all in league with al Qaeda) but this is the sort of thing that he would usually go along with.
But I couldn't get to Charlie. His office in City Hall said he was spending all day in his Leroy office. They gave me that number and I called it. The secretary there said no, he hadn't been there and he wasn't going to be in that office at all any time that day. I don't know if Charlie was hiding from the question he knew I was calling to ask him or if he was off someplace he didn't want either of his secretaries to know about, but I wanted you to know why there was no explanation here from him of that puzzling vote.
Joe Golombek is a liar
Immediately after the vote, Joe Golombek and I had this conversation:
Jackson: If you were in favor of Franczyk's amendment why did you vote for LoTempio's cloture just now?
Golombek: Basically because it's the rules of this body. Because a call for a table was called. That supercedes what Mr. Pitts was trying to do. And I think that if George Bush did what he just did this whole audience would have gone up in rapture.
(That's just doubletalk. I don't know what George Bush had to do with what just happened, since he doesn't chair any elected body, but I knew that Joe Golombek knew that a call for a vote on tabling was just a call for a vote on tabling, nothing more. He could have voted either way.)
Jackson: But a call for a table is a call for a vote. A call and a second doesn't mean you table. It means you take a vote on it.
Golombek: You vote on the tabling.
Jackson: Yes.
Golombek: That's what we voted. To table.
Jackson: You voted to table. Yes. But if you'd voted against tabling–
Golombek: It wouldn't have mattered. It would have been seven to five.
Jackson: And if Franczyk had voted against it
Golombek: It still wouldn't have mattered. They needed seven votes.
That is not true. Had Golombek and Franczyk voted against LoTempio the vote would have been 6-6, which would have meant her motion failed. Had Franczyk and Golombek wanted to keep discussion open, it would have remained open. They did not want to keep it open, which is why they voted to shut it down. But even without the numbers, if they were sincere in offering that amendment they would have voted to keep discussion open. Instead, they voted to shut it down.
A short time later, Golombek sent the following email to Paul Zarembka:
War is terrible because people die. To break the casualties up into ethnic and other categories, in an all volunteer military, simply disguises the real problems. That is that our cities are terribly undefended and this present administration in Washington has no urban agenda. Councilmember Franczyk put a resolution in that addressed these problems that the Council President objected to and was therefor removed from in front of the Council. Then the resolution in question was voted to be tabled. There was no vote concerning the war at all. The Council President then attempted to implement his interpretation of the rules of the Council in violation to the rules (as per Darryl McPherson the Corporation Counsel) and refused to vote even though a majority wanted a vote and were following the rules. Those in attendance who applauded the Council President should be ashamed of themselves. They told me that rules are only made to be followed when you agree with them. Imagine if George Bush rode roughshod the outcry there
would be.I didn't change anything. A lot of people make errors in the high-velocity world of email and we don't fault people for ordinary errors. But some things in Joe Golombek's email warrant comment.
For one thing, he's got George Bush in there again, and once again I have no idea why. Maybe he thinks about George Bush a lot.
For another, I added the italics there: Then the resolution in question was voted to be tabled. He could have written, "We voted to table it," but he didn't. Any time a politician shifts to the passive voice you should stop and ask why the passive, why no active person here, why is this lifted out of the area of assignable responsibility? Almost every time you'll conclude: It's because this guy is guilty as hell.
As Golombek is here. The resolution wasn't simply "voted to be tabled." Golombek and several others tabled it. They did it.
And it's not the least bit true that Council President Pitts was trying to keep Franczyk's amendments from getting in. Quite the contrary: he was fighting to get them in and Rosemary LoTempio was fighting to keep them out. I saw it. I was there.
Joe Golombek is an intelligent guy. He reads books. He has an MA in history. He teaches at Buff State. He works hard. He lives with his mother. He bartends weekends in the old neighborhood. He's got a baby-face and he wears round granny glasses.
And he'll look you straight in the eye and, with his baby-face and from behind those round granny glasses, he'll lie to you.
Unanswered questions after an unallowed discussion
Why would he do that?
And why would he and Rose LoTempio, Mark Coppola, David Franczyk, Charley Fisher, Mary Martino, Richard Fontana and Nick Bonifacio refuse to permit discussion of this resolution? Why are they so terrified of even talking about doing what Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Gary, Baltimore, Detroit, Jersey City, Syracuse, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Austin, Seattle, Milwaukee and well over one hundred other American cities did in the previous ten days?
And what does their inability to even permit conversation about this simple ethical issue suggest about their ability to have intelligent conversation about any kind of issue? Are they a group so pervaded by poison, myopia, narcissism, ethnocentrism and ego that they are incapable of dealing with any kind of complex problem at all?
Res ipsa loquitur, as they say. The thing speaks for itself.
"Scoundrels and liars at the Buffalo Common Council," which describes the way several members of the council subsequently tried to scapegoat Pitts for what they did.
The text of the resolution proposed by Council President Pitts and Councilman Thompson.
The text of the David Franczyk amendment, which David Franczyk never tried to submit but which James Pitts, Betty Jean Grant and Antoine Thompson did try to submit.
"What I would have said to the Buffalo Common Council about the peace resolution before them on March 4 if I'd been allowed to speak which I wasn't because nobody at all got to speak about the resolution because eight members on the Council wouldn't let anybody talk about it."
Copyright 2003 by Buffalo Report, Inc.
