Buffalo Rising Online

Nov 5th 2007, 12:37pm By Elena Cala Buscarino

One of the constant refrains heard about local government is simply this: We have too much of it. We also have a variety of freethinking, innovative people, from the public and political sectors, who've tried to effect changes in what they see as top-heavy government. Some have managed to deconstruct what they consider surplus government, while others have fallen short, nearly undoing their own political careers.

"I had to look at it from a historical perspective," said Riverside Council Member Joe Golombek (pictured above with Niagara District Councilman, Dominic Bonifacio) about his push to downsize the Buffalo Common Council back in 1999. "We had less population than we had when the council grew to 13 members. The change to 9 members made working within the council easier. It had become the 'too many cooks' scenario."

Golombek cites Rochester, a city that has a part-time, 7-member council, made up of 4 district and 3 at-large members, saying that it works well for them. He said that the availability of Buffalo council members casts them in the role of ombudsmen or "little mayors", often fielding telephone calls from constituents who should be calling various service departments in the city. "We don't have natural disasters or terrorists; our political climate is our problem. We're over-governed."

On the other hand, Golombek said that the fact that council members are called by their constituents demonstrates that they work well with the city and county. That brings him to the topic of county government: "I don't understand why we have it. It puts the City of Buffalo in the position of subsidizing the suburbs, like Amherst and Williamsville. Why should the poorest municipality take care of the wealthiest?"

Niagara District Councilman Dominic Bonifacio has a slightly different take on the council. "Just because population has dwindled doesn't mean we have less problems. The loss creates multiple problems through vacant properties," said Bonifacio. He has been known to personally mow the lawns of vacated properties in his district.

Bonifacio, who will be retiring this coming January, has concerns regarding downsizing, saying that dividing the city into four compass points with a central overseer would work if it weren't for the fact that certain areas, with their multiple dwelling units, outweigh others by large numbers of constituents. That's why he favors keeping the council at its current size and redistricting it, saying, "We become blinded if we don't look more closely at things."

Canisius College Political Science Professor Kevin R. Hardwick, PhD (above), said that the move to 9 council members from 13 was good, but that a council of 7 would probably work with some redistricting. Furthermore, he doesn't discount the importance of the symbolic role a council member plays with constituents, joking that, "It's hard to reach out and strangle a bureaucracy." He goes on to point out that Columbus, Ohio, at double the population, is doing quite well with 5 council members.

Hardwick feels strongly that the county legislature is where we continue to be a culture of waste. Being a county legislator is not a full time job, according to Hardwick, yet the 15 legislators are earning more than 42 out of 50 state senators. "The example is set by the people at the top," Hardwick said. "If the boss is ordering lobster..."

Hardwick also discussed the “city vs. suburbs problem”: There's a naturally occurring Robin Hood effect on people within the city, whereby people who live in the nice parts of town help those who don't. "Segregation by class and race are often the same thing, and people with resources help people with needs," Hardwick asserted. "But if a person makes a move from Delaware Park to Clarence, the city can't tap into those people anymore, which makes Buffalo dependent on external sources. The city needs the county for that.

"There's a need for regional government if it's being used properly. If we were to consolidate, the county would be a tremendous resource of centralized political services. We'd share fire, police, and sales tax revenue," Hardwick said. "You don't want to take away from the City of Buffalo."

The way Andrew Rudnick, President and CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership (above), sees it, politics took a wrong turn in the 60s and 70s when the economy started going down the tubes. "Political jobs became a source of employment. Elected officials were employed by the people in order to get jobs in return. As a result, government became huge."

The public also tends not to be able to separate the office from the incumbent office holder, according to Rudnick. "Joel Giambra ran a bully pulpit like he said he would," Rudnick said. "The role of the executive is to administer a fairly pedestrian set of services, but on a larger scale; unlike city stuff, it's highly visible. But let's not blow things out of perspective with things that are important to our particular lives. The role is fixed. Government shouldn't be more than that."

Rudnick made note of the fact that the goal of Giambra's administration was to cut taxes, "But he didn't cut expenses. He cut revenue, but not spending, and the gap resulted in the red/green budget," Rudnick said.

The resultant frustration from cultural institutions and entities such as the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) became sticking points in the management of county funds. "Dollars to the CVB was good economics for the county," according to Rudnick. Those funds are considered great marketing tools for each municipality and for the region as a whole.

"There are four things," Rudnick said, "that the incoming county executive will have to address...policy priorities for the business audience." They are as follows:

• use of the bed tax as a framework for regrowth

• a balance of services-to-expenditures through labor contracts and taking into account projected budget problems in the 2009-2010 fiscal year

• the role of the control board and how the incoming county executive will work with it

• the county's role in stimulating private sector investment and jobs

"The CVB's ability to recruit visitors and businesses depends on the willingness of government to work to bring people in, whether by tax abatements or dedicated taxes for growth enterprises," said Rudnick.

"Bed tax dedicated to the CVB results in an upsurge of visitors, who spend more dollars, and raise the level of the bed tax. That allows us to go forward," Rudnick said. "We need to market at a level equal to our peers."