North Coast Online

It's All Our Money After All

County Control Board Chairman Anthony Baines explains why the board has imposed a hiring freeze and makes a very important point to his critics.

One of the key points in the recent column was that many of the new jobs are largely state reimbursed and therefore have little effect on the county budget. However, aren't the taxpayers of Erie County also footing the bill for state-reimbursed positions?

Isn't the overall idea of fiscal stability to reduce the costs while increasing the efficiency? And shouldn't the taxpayers of Erie County know that simply because a position doesn't show up on the county payroll, that position still affects how efficiently the county is operated?

With Albany seemingly ever-ready to take more in taxes and then dole it back to the communities they took it from, it's become a pat  excuse for local governments and school boards to insist that it's free money.  Why get upset over this county position, Albany's reimbursing us!  You have to vote for this school construction project, Albany will pay for it!

And all too often, it works.  Mr. Haynes is to be commended for reminding Erie County that we paid for the state reimbursement, too.

Easy To Be Hard

I've tried real hard to convince myself that a "hard" control board for the county is a bad thing -- it is, admittedly, a usurpation of democratic, locally-chosen government.  And even if the electorate of the county insists on voting in candidates who seem devoted to out-of-control spending, shouldn't their decision stand?

But, I can't help it, I'm thrilled!

Erie County's control board wasted no time Friday in taking its first action as a "hard" board - an immediate freeze on hiring and a review of all new contracts.

The board voted unanimously to create a one-year "control period," the legal mechanism for acquiring more power, and pointed to a $51 million hole in the county's four-year financial plan as the primary reason why the county needs more oversight.

The board then used its newfound powers to adopt the hiring freeze and create a process for evaluating all new county contracts of $50,000 or more. Members also made it clear that a wage freeze is not on their agenda.

"We don't blame the county worker," said Chairman Anthony Baynes. "We think the problem is management."

If Erie County truly stood alone and there were no chance whatsoever that Albany wouldn't eventually step in and bail us out, then maybe the sovereign elector theory might stand.  But this latest legislature (along with Giambra, of course) seem willing to hope that a highly-unlikely confluence of complex events will come together to fund their dreams.  That's verging on irresponsibility.

And our county government (much as Buffalo's once did) also tacitly expects that if their budget plans just don't work out, that local representatives from higher levels of government (Albany) will step in and oblige taxpayers in the rest of the state to support us.  We should be ashamed about that.

No, ultimately, the hard control board will turn out to have been a good thing.  The city's control board has, after a few quick years, turned the climate of government around 180 degrees.  The Common Council, which was not so long ago a preening, camera-hogging, political monster is now much more what we'd expect.  Having lost the ability to write checks with no money in the account, it behaves responsibly and carefully.

The process of going from wealthy, growing industrial powerhouse to shrinking, beggar-town has gone on for 50 years now.  Government never got the message -- now it has.  The final step will be the imposition of a Control Board on Albany.  That'll be tough.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest And There's Not A Buffalo News Reporter To Tell Us . . .

Erie County at work.

Monday, four days after an Erie County Legislature committee ordered a stop to controversial logging operations on county forest land, the logger felled two valuable black cherry trees.

The move infuriated members of the Legislature's Energy and Environment Committee, which - after hearing environmentalists complain about the ongoing logging operations - decided Thursday to terminate the logger's contract.

I simply can't work up the outrage to be upset that two trees got cut down.

And In 2014 -- If The Lake Levels Rise . . .

First read about the County's proposal to hold the line on property taxes -- I'll wait.

. . . . . . . . . .

OK, you're back.  Look, when a puny, shrinking little county on the ass-end of New York State has to put together a plan this complicated, we can be pretty sure of at least two things. 

There aren't any cost-savings proposed and if the whole mess fails there'll be plenty of other government branches to blame.  It's laughable.

Fortunately for us, the control board is not amused.

Stop The Presses

If Erie County has reached the point where $60 in employee-overpayments makes the paper, maybe we have turned a corner.

When Term Limits Aren't Very Limiting At All

While I was once opposed to term limits on the grounds that good and honest representatives wouldn't be able to run again, I've changed my mind.  So, I was interested to see that some County Democrats have proposed a term-limit referendum for the fall.

But three four-year terms?  Please, twelve years is more than enough to become beholden to special interests.  If we're to have term limits, then let's make them "limiting."  I think back-to-back, two-year terms is sensible.  And I wouldn't object to one term -- part-time at that.

Tim Kennedy's Only Looking Out For Our Lungs

If anyone needed more evidence that the proposed worker-training law is nothing but a sop to the unions, anyone should read this.

The first asbestos-removal project in the  Rath County Office Building went from bad  to worse in short order.

After only days on the job, the contractor's asbestos handlers on March 2 allowed water to pour from the building's 14th floor to the 13th, so the Parks Department below had to relocate for a day.

Two weeks later, agents for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services found seven of the 11 workers on the asbestos job were undocumented aliens. The contractor, Superior Abatement of Fairfield, N.J., had been a defendant in federal and state courts and cited in the past, including for work performed in Buffalo.

Anyone certainly couldn't argue that this sounds like a completely-botched job -- and it's been federal law since the 1980s to require proof of citizenship when hiring an employee  so that's also a black mark against the contractor.  If, and I don't know if its true, the contractor in question had indeed been given documentation of citizenship which turned out to be forged.  It's a possibility, but only that.

So, at any rate, the County picked an apparently fly-by-night operation to remove asbestos from the Rath Building.  Why?

     Some county lawmakers attribute the  episode to a zeal to pick the lowest bidder  no matter its history

Hmm, iIt would indeed be welcome news if it turned out that our county lawmakers were so worried about the public purse that they relentlessly sought the lowest-bid.  On the other hand, county taxpayers might also expect that a bidder's history be taken into account.  I could submit a bid tomorrow under the name of Acme Asbestos Removal, Unlimited (beep, beep)  and underbid everyone. 

Doesn't mean that I know jack-excrement about how to do it.

The contractor, Superior Abatement of Fairfield, N.J., had been a defendant in federal and state courts and cited in the past, including for work performed in Buffalo.

That might have raised a flag.  But now we're back to the old training program.  If only the employees of this New Jersey company had had the advantage of some solid Erie County training.

If the workers on the asbestos-removal project had been asked to show proof they had completed a state apprentice program, as his law would have required, Kennedy said, then county officials could have excluded them from the job as unqualified.

None of this is a justification for the same people that hired the company without properly investigating it, to now pass yet another law that will supposedly prevent the very same yahoos from making a similarly bad decision in the future.  They're using their own bad judgement as an excuse to pass a regulation that will please the unions and make public contracts in Erie County even more expensive (that's the part that pleases the unions.)

Yeah, we want safe asbestos-removal.  We can have that without a special law in Erie County that the rest of the country seems to get along without.