North Coast Online

Almost Not A Drop to Drink

Um, something tells me that we will get backup generating power for the county water system.  And while I'm not suggesting jail time, I sure would like to see a serious investigation conducted into the management of the Water Authority.  That they ignored the problem in the face of an obvious need for so many years is inexcusable.

Rather than dip into their growing cash reserves, they preferred to spend thousands on a lobbyist to drum up support for federal money to pay for a generator.  Meanwhile, the "century" storm happened to come along and the suburbs were within hours of losing water.  It certainly would be good to see Mr. Spitzer address this. 

The Governor made his name going after private industries whose practices he disapproved of; finding out that he's equally outraged over the mis-deeds of government-sponsored agencies as well would be reassuring.

Boiling Mad

I nominate the Erie County Water Authority as the symbol of government ineptness and downright stupid decisions.  Since at least 2003 when the blackout hit the Northeast U.S. it's realized that backup electrical power was needed at its Sturgeon Point pumping station.  It did nothing, all the while, according to the Buffalo News, sitting on cash reserves of some $25 million. 

The Water Authority put the health of over half a million people at serious risk during the power outage after the October Surprise.  In an area where some 3/4 of the population was without electricity, the word got out to boil waster and it worked.  It's only luck that prevented an outbreak of E-coli or dysentery. 

Yet they sat on their money cushion and preferred instead to lobby Washington for more money.  In fact it's hard to decide which is worse, their gross negligence or their willingness to spend $1/2 million on their lobbying firm during the past 2 1/2 years.  But Executive Director Robert Mendez defended his organization's decisions.

"We had a plan in place that went fairly well, with the exception of Sturgeon Point, because that is such a large facility you can't get a portable generator there to run it," he said.

I believe Sturgeon Point supplies water to roughly half the county.  Let me give you an example.   The company I work for has a disaster plan for my worksite.  Should it ever have to be put into effect and only half of it works, the people who designed it won't have long career futures.

There really are consequences to so-called public benefit agencies that become rest homes for retired politicians.  We just happened to dodge them this time.

We're Just Sooooo Busy

OK, this is a fairly minor matter but it is symbolic of larger problems in local government.

Back in June, Paul Gerlach celebrated the fact that, yes indeed, you can fight County Hall.

At that time, Gerlach's group, Meals on Wheels, won the right to a refund of a controversial new county fee for health inspections.

Three months later, the local charity still is waiting for its money. So are 42 other organizations.

"We're going to get that $106 back, somehow," Gerlach said this week.

County officials acknowledge that refunds of the unpopular fee are late in going out and blame the delays on a lack of staffing in the Health Department.

"It's no secret we had significant budget cuts, and that's what the public wanted," said Dr. Anthony J. Billittier IV, the county's health commissioner. "We're struggling just to do our normal day-to-day public health tasks."

Billittier said the bulk of the refund requests have been sent to the county comptroller, the last step in the approval process. He said he hoped checks would go out soon.

"We're doing our best," he said.

How many checks can we possibly be talking about?  It can't possibly number more than a few dozen can it? And even if it's a hundred, how much work is involved in authorizing the cutting of some checks?  Now, as the honorable Dr. Billittier IV points out, the Health Department suffered staffing cutbacks in last year's short-lived taxpayer revolt.

I hope you'll excuse me for wondering if putting refunds to charitable organizations on the backburner isn't just a bit of Erie County government revenge.  You thwarted us and you vill pay.

Did Thomas Jefferson Ever Envision Control Boards?

One Linda Stevens, expressing her displeasure over the Erie County control board's rejection of the county's four year financial plan, has challenged its constitutionality.

"Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution do I see control boards mentioned," she said. "Control boards ruin democracy. This is not the representative government we were promised by our founding fathers. We didn't elect you."

Indeed, she may have unwittingly (little doubt about that in my mind) provided the Buffalo employee unions with some ammunition in their fight against the city's control board [Ed.: If you're reading this from outside of the area, pay close attention, we have control boards at many levels of government here.]  Perhaps they could take their fight over the pay-freeze to the Supreme Court, which is after all, charged with the duty of upholding the Constitution.

I can almost hear their defense and visualize their bumper stickers now (and there would be bumper stickers,) "No Stagnation Without Unionization."  It's sort of catchy, don't you think?  In fact, we could make it the state motto.

Joel's Excellent Debenture

So far I've been gratified that even the Buffalo News with its schizophrenic stable of reporters, editorialists and columnists has generally agreed with me that Joel's property-tax scheme is the proverbial "piece of work." 

Even the writers of "It seems to us," whom I rarely cite because they're just too smugly left-wing and cutesy for my taste, actually explain the thing pretty well.

Our editorial writer hit it square on when comparing Erie County Executive Joel Giambra's lastest tax and revenue scheme to a Rube Goldberg model of how to put a penny in a piggy bank. After much study, here's how Giambra's plan works: He takes the money from you via the sales tax and keeps it. That unweights a thingamajig that alerts school districts they can't have any anymore. They boil over and steam burns the state bird, which flies from its perch, a gold bar of extra aid to the county. The bar, left uncovered, is seized by scores of FsOJ (Friends of Joel) needed to administer such a complex program and sliced into 1,000 pieces. Those fall down a set of stairs into Giambra's pocket and he gives them out to taxpayers as he sees fit. What a plan.

Precisely.

And as for that "cutesy, smug" remark?  Well, it takes one to know one -- but this is good stuff.

A Stopped Clock Is Right Twice A Day

There's been precious little good news coming out of the Erie County Legislature lately.  So the fact that they nixed the idea of adding a County Manager to an already-bloated bureaucracy comes as a pleasant surprise.  I'm not resting too easily, though.  I fear that if they can figure out a way that the manager could be an SEIU member, they might still approve it.

Understated Headline Of The Day

Legislature Democrats stay true to labor-friendly roots

I Think Economists Call It Creative Destruction -- Or Maybe Just Destruction

The County Legislature has passed its apprenticeship law.  All bidders on County projects worth more than $250,000 will have to provide a state-approved (read union-sanctioned) apprentice-training program for their employees.  This can only result in fewer companies bidding on county projects. 

Small contractors won't be able to afford the more extensive training required by the regulation and will simply stop bidding on Erie County projects.  The legislature has passed a bill that makes it harder for smaller -- and here's the key -- non-union companies to compete. Reducing the competition for the bids will raise the price paid by the taxpayers.  It's not rocket-science, folks. 

The unions wanted this and Tim Kennedy delivered.  Kennedy, you'll recall, is the Chairman of the Economic Development Committee and we now have at least two examples of his, um, unusual economic development theories.  First, as we've just seen: add unnecessary and restrictive training costs on contractors that drive up the price of County projects and cut small businesses out of the loop.  And second: charge businesses with more than 100 employees $3/hour per employee to pay for health insurance whether they already provide it or not.

The bill for that beauty alone would cost my employer about $6 1/2 million each year.  Sure, we'd get it back a year later -- but why should the state hang on to the company's money?  It already provides pretty good health-care coverage.  It's a truly mind-numbingly ignorant proposal.

The really big laugh came when Kennedy and the guy from the Building and Trades Council stood there today in front of the microphones claiming that the apprenticeship law will cause economic growth.  Yeah right, businesses will flock here now. I bet the phones are ringing off the hook tonight at the ECIDA.

Step One: Boil Water (See Chapter V, Paragraph II)

A while back I wrote about the $106 fee that the Erie County Health Department now imposes on charitable organizations who sell food at a fund-raising event.  I thought it was foolish and potentially damaging to those groups to be saddled with a health-inspection.  Now, it turns out they probably won't even get the inspection.

"We got a paper permit, which we had to post in a conspicuous place," said Paul Gerlach, who helped organize a sale May 20 for the North Tonawanda Meals on Wheels, which also serves Erie County's City of Tonawanda. "We received a two-page sheet of regulations, which included requirements that we have a canopy over our stand, a hand-washing station, a fire extinguisher . . . "

But no Health Department inspector arrived. And because it was rainy and sales were slow that day, the $106 fee for a few sheets of paper ate up 25 percent of the profit, he said.

I'd be fascinated to know how Erie County came up with the $106 figure.  It has such the ring of precision and competency, doesn't it?  You'd be forgiven for believing it was arrived at after long and careful calculations. 

After all, the additional staffing required to satisfy the new regulation would no doubt necessitate sending government inspectors out even on weekends and holidays (at time and a half.) It can't be cheap to assure that our charitable hot dogs are hot enough and that our non-profit cold plates are truly arctic.  But now that we know the fee's actually for a sheet of paper, my guess is that the Health Department took this year's raises and pension increases and divided that sum by the number of free permits they issued last year.

"$105.51, hey make it $106."  And the budget was met.

Really, there oughta be a law.  No, wait, forget I said that.  The Democrats are in charge now.  They'll pass one in a heartbeat and it won't be one I like.

Hey, It's Only 4.75 Cents!

Republican county legislator Michael Ranzenhofer proposed that Erie County join New York State and cap its sales tax on gasoline to the first $2 a gallon.  He pointed out that the extra taxes the county's collecting because of the more expensive gas weren't budgeted for in the first place.  But golly gee, the Democrats aren't interested.

Ranzenhofer challenged Democratic Chairwoman Lynn M. Marinelli as she tried to send his resolution to a committee, where it would land on the heap of other stalled initiatives. A statement written weeks ago by Lancaster Democrat Kathy Konst urging the State Legislature to limit the state tax on gasoline also landed in committee obscurity.

Lawmakers also debated the best way to lessen the demand for oil: expanded mass transit, alternate forms of energy, high-mileage vehicles.

You'll remember that the Democrats are eternally worried about taxes on the poor, and this gasoline tax hits the poor much harder than it hits the rich.  But when government really, really needs wants the money, taxes on the poor become a sad necessity.  After all, the tax gathers $7 million or so of additional revenue that they didn't have to pretend Albany would make up for and didn't have to avoid the TV cameras to pass. 

And some good ol' Democrat distrust of business played a hand, too. County Executive Giambra (who's as Republican as Mayor Bloomberg) let that out of the bag.

New York's counties have been invited to follow suit with a similar cap on the sales taxes they apply. Chautauqua County legislators approved such a cap Wednesday night. But County Executive Joel A. Giambra has said Erie County government cannot afford it, and he doubts retailers will pass along the savings to motorists.

Of course they'd pass the savings along.  Gas stations are probably the most price-competitive businesses around.  Even if most of them didn't want to drop the price (and they wouldn't,) they would eventually because one of them that was hurting for business would do it first and the rest would have to follow.  To paraphrase Adam Smith: It is not from the benevolence of the businessman that prices drop, it's because the bastard across the street dropped his first.

Giambra's remark was ignorant and insulting as was the Legislature's failure to act.

[UPDATE:] You've got to love the picture of Erie County's solons debating how best the country might reduce its demand for oil.  I only hope they had some time left during the session to discuss their views on Iran's nuclear weapons program -- the world is waiting.