Opinion and Commentary since 2003
The Erie County Legislature has unanimously elected Betty Jean by as Chairwoman of that body. Tim Hogues made the nomination, with seconds coming from Loughran, Mazur, and Marinelli. Republican legislator Kevin Hardwick also spoke warmly about Grant, jokingly concluding that he reserved the right to retract his remarks “the first time [she] crosses [him]”.
Over the weekend, we inaugurated a new County Executive, Mark Poloncarz. After four years of being told that government needed to be run like a business, Poloncarz reminded us of government’s true reason for being.
A government isn’t a business, and shouldn’t be run like one. It exists to serve its constituents; its people. It exists exactly to provide services that the private sector cannot – or will not – provide to meet the needs of its people. It exists not to serve a small elite, but those with the least influence.
It represents a complete redirection of what the purpose of government is, and whom it serves. To that end, the first five executive orders Poloncarz signed are:
Executive Order #001—Procurement of Legal Services to Support Buffalo Bills Lease Negotiations:
This order requires the Erie County Attorney to immediate commence a process to procure the services of special counsel to support the upcoming lease negotiations with the Buffalo Bills through the issuance of a Request for Proposals from qualified law firms.
Executive Order #002—Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Task Force:
This order requires the Commissioner of the Department of Social Services, in conjunction with the County Attorney’s Office and the Erie County Comptroller’s Office, to recommend the methods and procedures to create a Medicaid Anti-Fraud Task Force.
As Comptroller, Poloncarz issued a review (6/17/2009) examining Erie County’s anti-fraud initiatives and expressing concern over the County’s lack of progress in recovering funds from providers engaging in fraud.
Executive Order #003—Time and Attendance Monitoring – Use of Swipe Cards:
This order requires every employee of Erie County, including the Deputy County Executive, commissioners, deputy commissioners and other exempt employees to abide by Erie County’s electronic time keeping “swipe card” system policy as stated in the Erie County Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual.
As Comptroller, Poloncarz issued two separate reviews (7/15/2009 and 8/11/2011) of the swipe card system, which noted that prior administrations had exempted commissioners, deputy commissioners and senior staff from adhering to the policy.
Executive Order #004—Equal Employment Opportunity Program Review and Update:
This order requires the Director of the Erie County Equal Employment Opportunity Office to review and update the Erie County Affirmative Action Manual to bring it into compliance with current law and practices. This manual has not been updated since 1981.
Executive Order #005—Review of Use of Outside Counsel by the Erie County Attorney:
This order requires the Erie County Attorney to conduct a study and submit a report on the use of retained counsel by Erie County.
Poloncarz Inaugural Speechhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/77112929/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-2i78mdgjia98tt9s4975//
As we round out 2011, I would usually post a retrospective of the year’s posts here, but most of my 2011 archives are no longer online. So, instead, I’ll leave you with this thought-provoking post from Rochester journalist Rachel Barnhart.
In it, Barnhart recounts a discussion she had with a friend about Rochester’s urban core and its suburbs. He argued that suburbanites simply have no need for the city proper anymore, as any and all of their daily needs can easily and conveniently be met closer to home. To them, whether the city sinks or swims is irrelevant, and they believe that the suburbs have developed a way of living that is immune to the city’s successes and failures. From Barnhart’s piece, her friend argued,
The suburbs are so great we don’t need to leave. We have everything, they’re the best suburbs in the country.
If you’re my dad, he has no reason to leave Webster. He has fine dining, shopping and Wegmans. You think people are always denigrating the city, but our suburbs are second to none.
You think life would stop in Brighton and Pittsford if downtown died? The city is not the hub for those people. I’m one of them.
I’m not smart enough to have a prescription to fix downtown. It’s sad and it’s a shame, but (the death of downtown) wouldn’t have the impact you think.
We need to focus on the entire area. We have great suburbs and crime is going down. You think I’m so anti-city and I’m not. I just don’t think downtown and the city are as important.
It’s a topic that comes up quite often in Buffalo. When I first started paying attention to local politics, the city was in rough shape and the county was doing great, flush with tobacco settlement money. Before the red/green budget, suburbanites would gleefully announce to, e.g., Sandy Beach that the county should just take over the city. Within a matter of days, the assumptions underlying that position changed 180 degrees. 
I’m a big believer in the notion that the suburbs and the city sink or swim together. Like Toronto, Erie County should have a metropolitan government that fairly represents all the people. We should have a unified school district that strives for excellence, and discourages complacency and failure. The 50s way of governing needs to be replaced with something more effective, and more reflective of current realities. We need to consolidate our business development, planning/land use, maintenance, and purchasing functions. We need to make it easier for businesses to navigate a much reduced, rationally laid out set of bureaucratic regulations. Nostalgia shouldn’t be our biggest industry – we need to better support and encourage today’s innovators and tomorrow’s moguls.
But turning specifically to the topic in Barnhart’s piece about the declining need for a downtown, there are loads of people throughout WNY who have no use for the city proper unless they have court, Sabres tickets, or the theater. All other services are not only available, but more convenient, closer to home; home predominately being some suburb.
Crowdsourcing
The national trend of hip young people moving into downtowns has touched Buffalo only tangentially; most newer housing is comprised of rentals, which have a built-in transience. Condos in the downtown core are almost exclusively high-end, going for more than 300k.
I think downtown Buffalo has a lot of problems that are largely self-inflicted through poor planning, little foresight, and weak zoning. A land value tax would go a long way towards rendering land speculation of vacant lots less economically viable, and perhaps grow downtown again. When I visit Rochester, it seems to me as if its downtown is more robust and better maintained than Buffalo’s. But that could be a grass-is-greener thing.
In order to render old, decaying downtowns vital and vibrant again, people need an incentive to go there. I’m an advocate for a sales-tax-free zone for Buffalo’s downtown core. By giving people $.0875 cents off every dollar they spend, you could easily, quickly, and organically spur interest in downtown retail and revitalize an area that people have no reason to visit. With the pending development of Buffalo’s Canal Side (waterfront project through the ESD), this sales-tax-free zone becomes even more acute of an issue. We’re spending millions to create a tourist/shopping/cultural destination, we should ensure that it’s used and that it helps revitalize its surroundings.
It’s not the weather. It’s not the 190 or the Scajaquada or the 33. It’s not the Skyway. These things are not keeping Buffalo’s downtown lame. Through a sales-tax-free downtown, people from throughout the region, and from Canada, will have a huge incentive to demand goods and services within that zone, and private enterprise will swoop in to supply it.
I think we do need downtown, but more importantly, downtown needs us. It needs feet on the ground, and it needs cash in wallets, ready to be spent on something. We have a real chicken-and-egg scenario here – retailers won’t come downtown because there isn’t any retail downtown. And let’s face it, when we think about a downtown – if you look at the old pictures of Main Street in the 50s, or better still, 100 years ago, it was a teeming mess of people, shops, eateries, offices; things to do, people to see.
It could be that again, given the right environment. It just needs a few nudges in the right direction.
Happy New Year.
Until now, the only hire of which we were aware was Richard Tobe as Deputy County Executive. Today, the Poloncarz transition team announced a second batch of hires:
· Gale R. Burstein, MD, MPH, FAAP, FSAHM, Commissioner of Health
· Robert W. Keating, Director of Budget and Management
· Daniel Neaverth Jr., Commissioner of Emergency Services
· Michael A. Siragusa, JD, County Attorney
· Maria R. Whyte, Commissioner of Environment and Planning
From the press release, after the jump. Read more
Outgoing County Executive Chris Collins granted an exit interview to the Buffalo News’ Bob McCarthy. This is no surprise, as McCarthy had been quite vocally assuming all summer that, solely on the basis of Collins’ own deep pockets, he would cruise to an easy re-election.
We all know that didn’t happen.
A week after the election, McCarthy transcribed the concern-trolling from several grumbling Republican insiders. Among their concerns,
How did a county executive who fulfilled all his promises with minimal effects on taxes and no scandals manage to lose?
And in yesterday’s Collins interview, McCarthy repeats – almost verbatim – the same Collinsphilia nonsense.
This time, the defeat seems to genuinely hurt. Collins struggles to grasp how he lost after keeping all his campaign promises of 2007 while running Erie County without a hint of scandal.
Setting aside Collins’ sour grapes and complete lack of self-awareness, it is untrue that he “kept all his campaign promises” and was somehow free from scandal. The first step to getting better, they say, is admitting you have a problem.
The Buffalo News' Bob McCarthy
First of all, to say Collins didn’t have scandals is to ignore the time when he referred to the Jewish Assembly Speaker as the “anti-Christ”, and the time when Collins jokingly demanded a “lap dance” in order to save a seat at the State of the State address for a well-connected female executive at a local construction company. It ignores the fact that, to some people, informing them days before Christmas that they’d be losing their state-funded daycare services and that they’d have to quit their jobs to watch their kids, is quite scandalous indeed. It ignores how Collins and his newfound nouveau-riche friend Carl tried to bully David Bellavia to drop out of the NY-26 race.
Secondly, Collins did not “fulfill all his promises“. Collins raised taxes, deepened regional cleaves, and ran on“Three Rs – Reforming Erie County government, Rebuilding the local economy, and ultimately, Reducing taxes.”
He did not reform county government – in fact, he resisted and blocked reforms almost routinely (another “r”); he did not rebuild the local economy, but ensured that stimulus funds were hoarded to artificially improve his balance sheet; and he did not reduce – but raised – taxes.
That’s breaking your promises, and that’s failure under any measure. It’s no wonder he lost
As for the remainder of Collins’ pity party,
Over and over again, the county executive turns to a consoling statistic — 39 out of 44.
That’s the number of county municipalities that voted for him on Nov. 8, only to be “overruled” by the cities of Buffalo and Lackawanna, and towns of Cheektowaga, Tonawanda and West Seneca.
That he won a plurality of small-population towns means nothing. People vote – not square footage.
Practically everyone he meets on the street, he said, says they cast their vote for him. His friends and supporters still tell him he was on the right track, and he firmly believes that the struggles and turmoil of his first term had set the stage for a second term of unparalleled success.
“With everything we had fixed,” he said, “frankly, the next four years would have been cruise control.”
Gee, that “cruise control” quip would have made a great campaign slogan. I guess this reveals that people are polite to Mr. Collins when they encounter him on the street.
Collins lost in the cities and big towns, he now says, because of the “polarizing” nature of politics and a stagnant economy that brought home Erie County’s Democratic plurality of 135,000 voters.
The influence of unions in the Poloncarz campaign energized city Democrats, he said, while stoking a “class warfare” mentality that piggybacked on the rhetoric of Washington and Albany.
That’s rich, coming from a guy whose entire agenda involved marginalizing and harming the poorest in the cities in an effort to gain political support in the wealthier suburbs. It’s a hallmark of current Republican thought that it’s important to kick the poor when they’re down. Slackers.
He rejects opponents’ claims of “arrogance” in running government, instead reasoning that his “noisy” four years energized entrenched interests and the status quo.
The “arrogant” label he now says, stuck with voters as part of a four-year “agenda” of The Buffalo News.
Chris Collins attended exactly zero candidate forums this past election cycle. He begrudgingly attended the one televised debate, and the two that weren’t. He couldn’t even be bothered to drive .5 miles up Goodrich Road to speak with voters at Clarence Town Hall at a candidates’ forum hosted by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. It’s not his money that makes him arrogant – it’s his arrogance that makes him arrogant.
“I don’t believe people voted against me because I was successful in business or I live in a nice house,” he said. “I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth.
“It’s just that class warfare polarizes the country,” he added, “so certainly there is an impact now in local elections, and it plays a role in polarizing people back to party affiliation.”
Never forget that Collins was phenomenally successful at exploiting suburban phobias and resentments at the expense of the poorest in the cities. No one played the class warfare game better than he. Erie County is better off for returning first Chris Lee, and now Chris Collins back to their lives of gentlemanly leisure. Jane Corwin is the last of the hyperwealthy GOP troika left standing, and her loss to Kathy Hochul last May foreshadowed what happened to her next-door neighbor in November.
Outgoing County Executive Chris Collins granted an exit interview to the Buffalo News’ Bob McCarthy. This is no surprise, as McCarthy had been quite vocally assuming all summer that, solely on the basis of Collins’ own deep pockets, he would cruise to an easy re-election.
We all know that didn’t happen.
A week after the election, McCarthy transcribed the concern-trolling from several grumbling Republican insiders. Among their concerns,
How did a county executive who fulfilled all his promises with minimal effects on taxes and no scandals manage to lose?
And in yesterday’s Collins interview, McCarthy repeats – almost verbatim – the same Collinsphilia nonsense.
This time, the defeat seems to genuinely hurt. Collins struggles to grasp how he lost after keeping all his campaign promises of 2007 while running Erie County without a hint of scandal.
Setting aside Collins’ sour grapes and complete lack of self-awareness, it is untrue that he “kept all his campaign promises” and was somehow free from scandal. The first step to getting better, they say, is admitting you have a problem.
The Buffalo News' Bob McCarthy
First of all, to say Collins didn’t have scandals is to ignore the time when he referred to the Jewish Assembly Speaker as the “anti-Christ”, and the time when Collins jokingly demanded a “lap dance” in order to save a seat at the State of the State address for a well-connected female executive at a local construction company. It ignores the fact that, to some people, informing them days before Christmas that they’d be losing their state-funded daycare services and that they’d have to quit their jobs to watch their kids, is quite scandalous indeed. It ignores how Collins and his newfound nouveau-riche friend Carl tried to bully David Bellavia to drop out of the NY-26 race.
Secondly, Collins did not “fulfill all his promises“. Collins raised taxes, deepened regional cleaves, and ran on“Three Rs – Reforming Erie County government, Rebuilding the local economy, and ultimately, Reducing taxes.”
He did not reform county government – in fact, he resisted and blocked reforms almost routinely (another “r”); he did not rebuild the local economy, but ensured that stimulus funds were hoarded to artificially improve his balance sheet; and he did not reduce – but raised – taxes.
That’s breaking your promises, and that’s failure under any measure. It’s no wonder he lost
As for the remainder of Collins’ pity party,
Over and over again, the county executive turns to a consoling statistic — 39 out of 44.
That’s the number of county municipalities that voted for him on Nov. 8, only to be “overruled” by the cities of Buffalo and Lackawanna, and towns of Cheektowaga, Tonawanda and West Seneca.
That he won a plurality of small-population towns means nothing. People vote – not square footage.
Practically everyone he meets on the street, he said, says they cast their vote for him. His friends and supporters still tell him he was on the right track, and he firmly believes that the struggles and turmoil of his first term had set the stage for a second term of unparalleled success.
“With everything we had fixed,” he said, “frankly, the next four years would have been cruise control.”
Gee, that “cruise control” quip would have made a great campaign slogan. I guess this reveals that people are polite to Mr. Collins when they encounter him on the street.
Collins lost in the cities and big towns, he now says, because of the “polarizing” nature of politics and a stagnant economy that brought home Erie County’s Democratic plurality of 135,000 voters.
The influence of unions in the Poloncarz campaign energized city Democrats, he said, while stoking a “class warfare” mentality that piggybacked on the rhetoric of Washington and Albany.
That’s rich, coming from a guy whose entire agenda involved marginalizing and harming the poorest in the cities in an effort to gain political support in the wealthier suburbs. It’s a hallmark of current Republican thought that it’s important to kick the poor when they’re down. Slackers.
He rejects opponents’ claims of “arrogance” in running government, instead reasoning that his “noisy” four years energized entrenched interests and the status quo.
The “arrogant” label he now says, stuck with voters as part of a four-year “agenda” of The Buffalo News.
Chris Collins attended exactly zero candidate forums this past election cycle. He begrudgingly attended the one televised debate, and the two that weren’t. He couldn’t even be bothered to drive .5 miles up Goodrich Road to speak with voters at Clarence Town Hall at a candidates’ forum hosted by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. It’s not his money that makes him arrogant – it’s his arrogance that makes him arrogant.
“I don’t believe people voted against me because I was successful in business or I live in a nice house,” he said. “I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth.
“It’s just that class warfare polarizes the country,” he added, “so certainly there is an impact now in local elections, and it plays a role in polarizing people back to party affiliation.”
Never forget that Collins was phenomenally successful at exploiting suburban phobias and resentments at the expense of the poorest in the cities. No one played the class warfare game better than he. Erie County is better off for returning first Chris Lee, and now Chris Collins back to their lives of gentlemanly leisure. Jane Corwin is the last of the hyperwealthy GOP troika left standing, and her loss to Kathy Hochul last May foreshadowed what happened to her next-door neighbor in November.
Why don’t any qualified people want the job of interim Erie County Comptroller? Is it the pay, the politics, or something altogether different? This isn’t the kind of job where you just insert some ex-politician or hack as a patronage “thank you”; it requires a genuine and deep understanding of government finance.
Suffice it to say that none of the names you may have been hearing are going anywhere near that job.
Follow @buffalopundit
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);
County Executive-elect Poloncarz has appointed Richard Tobe to be his Deputy County Executive. Tobe is a lawyer and held the Erie County post of Commissioner of Environment and Planning for a decade, and was Mayor Byron Brown’s Commissioner for Economic Development until 2008.
During the County Executive campaign, Poloncarz said that his deputy would be a “jobs czar”, concentrating on growing the economy and job creation. From the press release:
Poloncarz stated, “As I have said, my Deputy County Executive’s will focus on job creation and creating a streamlined, sustainable and efficient approach to economic development in Erie County. This position required an individual that not only had a proven track record of successfully navigating the often turbulent local economic development process but who could also help create a better system for tomorrow. Today, I am proud to announce Richard Tobe will serve in that role. It is time that Erie County taxpayers see a return on the investment of their tax dollars into economic development initiatives that show results. Richard’s decades of successful and multi-faceted economic development experience in the public and private sectors make him the perfect choice to lead these efforts.”
Transition Chairman Michael Joseph added, “The County Executive-elect has made an excellent choice in recruiting Rich Tobe to serve the county. Mr. Tobe’s decades of public service in economic development and planning, including a lead role in negotiating complex deals and public infrastructure projects makes him an ideal candidate to serve in the key role as Deputy County Executive.”
Mr. Tobe has more than 30 years of economic development experience in the public and private sectors as well as academia. During his 12 years serving the Gorski administration as Commissioner of Environment and Planning, Tobe led the County’s successful effort to negotiate a new long-term lease agreement with the Buffalo Bills, and construct the Buffalo Sabres’ arena (now First Niagara Center) in downtown Buffalo, while serving as the point-person with New York State and local municipalities on economic development initiatives.
Since then Tobe has served as an adjunct professor at the University at Buffalo’s Graduate School of Planning and School of Law, Vice President of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, and Commissioner of the City of Buffalo’s Department of Economic Development, Permit and Inspection Services.
Tobe said, “I am supremely honored to serve County Executive-elect Poloncarz as the Deputy County Executive. I strongly agree with the County Executive-elect that, for too long, Erie County has been devoid of a cohesive and focused economic development strategy. I know and love this community and I am confident that by working together with local, state and federal economic development agencies and by leveraging our abundance of resources and strategic location we can realize real, sustainable growth.”
I’m hearing that the Democratic majority in the Erie County Legislature may be in jeopardy; that a couple of legislators are busily trying to cut side deals regarding jobs and the chairmanship.
Are we looking at another January of fail, or will people get to work and start tackling big problems and big ideas, rather than angling for patronage and influence?
Obviously, this is from a press release. First house-cleaning in many years, what with the first incoming Democratic County Executive since 1988.
POLONCARZ TEAM ANNOUNCES IT IS ACCEPTING RESUMES FOR POSITIONS
County Executive-elect Poloncarz Encourages Those Interested in Serving Erie County in his Administration to Submit Resumes Online
ERIE COUNTY, NY—Today, Erie County Executive-elect Mark C. Poloncarz announced the launch of his transition team’s new website at http://www2.erie.gov/transition. At the website, Erie County residents can find the latest news from the Poloncarz Transition Team, as well as the list of available positions and how people can submit an application for a position.
Over the next month, the transition team will look to fill approximately 70 positions within the incoming Poloncarz administration ranging from department heads to other policymaking, administrative and managerial confidential staff positions. The transition team strongly encourages anyone interested in serving Erie County to submit an application electronically. The transition team’s executive committee, chaired by businessman Michael Joseph will review cover letters and resumes and make recommendations to the County Executive-elect. A list of the available positions, job specifications and qualifications and the process for applying for a position in the administration can be found at http://www2.erie.gov/transition/index.php?q=applying-job.
Poloncarz stated, “I will rely on the expertise and unique viewpoints that each of my transition team members bring to the table to help me recruit an administration representative of all of Erie County. I encourage anyone who is interested in serving our community as part of my new administration to visit the transition website and submit their resume as soon as possible.”
Transition Chairman Michael Joseph added, “The executive committee strongly encourages Erie County residents to go to the transition website, review the available positions and their qualifications and to apply online. We are accepting applications and seeking highly qualified and diverse candidates to serve County Executive-elect Poloncarz in his administration.”
