7 July 2005
Peyton Randolph
Erie County's mess: Déjà vu all over again
Erie County can’t pay its bills.
The county is so desperate it’s in the position of someone hitting the ceiling on a Master Card and deciding to ease the situation by starting on the Visa card. The county’s reserves are gone, all its cash is gone and there’s a payroll at the end of next week.The plan is to borrow $80-million between now and then, to have the cash in the bank on July 14 to start spending it on payroll on July 15.
It’s going to be interesting to see who will loan the county cash and at what interest rate, probably high.
The last time the county couldn’t pay its bills was two decades ago, when the Rutkowski Administration ran the county into the ground. That time was so bad there was a committee which met each morning to decide if there was enough cash in the till to pay some bills, something veteran reporters around here tell jokes about. There were days when there wasn’t any cash and there weren’t any payments.
In some ways this mess is worse because even when there is some cash, there probably aren’t enough people in the comptroller’s office to cut the checks.
Former Comptroller Nancy Naples said a couple of weeks ago the county was $40-million behind in paying its bills. It may be even higher right now and there are elements of madness in the mess, like not being able to pay for gasoline for sheriff’s patrol cars.
The bright lights of the Giambra Administration can’t plead ignorance of the Rutkowski mess, since current Budget Director Joseph Passafiume served on the committee counting bills back then. And a couple of members of the County Legislature were around also to tell stories about what went on back then. That’s why people like Chuck Swanick actually have some informed advice they might offer, at least if he weren’t so bush dodging the bullet and the responsibility.
That’s also true of County Executive Joel Giambra.
After State Comptroller Alan Hevesi delivered his review of county finances, Giambra said he liked the report, with just a few problems. Giambra thought he ought to have been allowed to comment that the projected deficit isn’t really as big as Hevesi estimates and that Albany is really responsible because of pension costs and Medicaid costs. In other words, Giambra thinks Hevesi is all wrong and the county executive is right, as usual.
Where this becomes different is Albany. People in the State Capitol are tired of Giambra and he continually rubs the raw wounds in State Senator Dale Volker and State Assembly Majority Leader Paul Tokasz. They have struck back at him with a soft control board. It’s only soft until the county executive and the County Legislature hit the trip wires in the bill and a hard control board like Buffalo’s emerges. They will and it will.
The county is run by people whose sense of responsibility ends with their own goals and ambitions and if that collides with the best way to resolve the fiscal situation, screw the county. There’s a good example sitting in the Legislature right now, Amherst Republican Elise Cusack. She’s been an open wound in this mess from the beginning. Cusack is opposed to raising taxes and opposed to cutting spending, except for her delusional plan for dealing with the mess.
If you have a legislator who has proven incompetent and unwilling to be responsible, what happens to that legislator?
In this situation, she gets a promotion. Cusack is going on the State Power Authority, replacing well-connected local businessman Lou Ciminelli. Only in New York could an important state official with some experience as a hereditary developer and businessman be replaced on the same day with a county legislator who’s a demonstrated screwup. Of course, it helps if your husband is tightly connected with Congressman Thomas Reynolds, the local power broker and pipeline to Governor George Pataki.
The one good thing is that she’s not running again.
Now the whole state is dealing with her and all of New York State can wonder: What the hell is going on in Erie County?
Copyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.