4 March 2005
Peyton Randolph
Rethinking
The theory of history and politics as a pendulum, swinging back and forth, is seeing an interesting analogy in the Erie County fiscal mess.
For more than three-quarters of a century, the county was the “go to guy,” the government which was the financier of last resort because it was seen as having more money. That was true in the era of the Great Depression when towns off-loaded their roads onto the county because the county had the cash to maintain and plow them, leaving the county with an expensive network of roads to repair and expand. It was true in the years after World War II when Buffalo unloaded the old Meyer Memorial Hospital in the county, eventually to morph into the current Erie County Medical Center. It was true when the current Buffalo & Erie County Public Library system was created, with its crazy-quilt financing system, multiple managements and decentralized decision-making on when and where to build libraries. It was true when cultural and regional recreational institutions were unloaded on the county because the city couldn’t afford grants to theaters or orchestras or to maintain the landmark Olmstead Parks. It’s been true for years when the increasingly professionalized sheriff’s department became the police department of choice for local governments too cheap or too poor to have their own departments.It’s been true for years with local governments too cheap to have their own parks, instead relying on constantly improving county parks, easing the property tax burden and making communities more attractive to developers. Albany off-loaded costs and responsibilities on counties, like Medicaid, and counties expanded their own activities, operations like Erie Community College.
Now, the pendulum has stalled as county leaders (we need a better word to describe the current crew) stumble toward a fiscal solution. As County Legislator Chuck Swanick constantly faces TV cameras and constantly tells the lens, “It will be a different Erie County.” Yes, Chuck, it will.
Ordinarily, I could say the mess offers an opportunity for a better and better-run county government. With people like Swanick and some of the braying suburban politicians, that won’t happen. It showed perfectly as Swanick and some other suburban county legislator yahoos preached the need to turn city parks back to Buffalo, to save county dollars. In effect, they wanted city parks closed just as their suburban county parks are closed. Tit for tat, a perfect example of the stupidity and xenophobia as you cross the city line.
It isn’t just the suburbs. Look at the Buffalo Common Council killing a plan to merge the city water system and the Erie County Water Authority. A good idea, potentially saving a lot of money and possibly even creating a better water system. But, that would mean governmental cooperation and our pols have shown cooperation is something they won’t do.
Of course, it would also mean less potential patronage for city leaders (?), something the public has shown in polls about the Giambra Administration it’s tired of. Some of it is simple stupidity. Some is certainly racism. Some of it is the local atavism, the idea that a new idea is a bad idea. Erie County is never going to be the same.
Many communities have been forced to make similar choices and re-think government. Some moved to metro government, the third rail of local politics here because it’s seen as taking away the political power of business pressure groups and potentially letting ‘those people” have control in the suburbs or even (horrors) move into the suburbs.
Of course, that’s because there is this image that suburban governments are better run than Buffalo. Just look at Amherst’s efforts with the Pepsi Center, Cheektowaga’s recycling circus or Lancaster’s traffic problems to realize bad government fills the area, not just inside the city line or inside the Rath Building and County Hall.
Now, it’s time to re-think government. Does the county need its overlapping array of water systems, sewer systems and special districts? Could we do better with fewer assessors, tax collectors, purchasing officers and campaign contribution collectors? Could government be better for less?
That’s not likely to be the issue.
We need a local government statesman who has a track record of accomplishment and a vision of how to create a better and cheaper government. I don’t want to sound too much like Joel Giambra, who talks a good game and kicks like Scott Norwood in the Super Bowl. Instead of this miracle-working man or woman, we get the fiscally panicked occupants of the Rath Building and County Hall, clueless as to what to do, other than to say it’s up to some one else at some other time.
We need to re-think government, looking for a better way to do things because if we don’t, let the last person out turn off the street lights and traffic signals.
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.