Our state and local governments are so broken that the best hope for renewal and growth in the next decade is to implode the leadership and start anew. That’s right — I specifically said leadership, not the vast treasures of our region and its incredible beauty. Contrary to perception, we have great weather, we have great natural beauty, we have dedicated business owners and the residents of our region are the best people on the planet.
What we have right now is more than a squandering of those assets. We have a crime in progress.
This should be like a drug sweep; they never round up one person. A drug sweep by law enforcement takes out an entire network. That’s exactly what our political leadership is, a network, and it doesn’t even have a product to sell.
Ground Zero for political decay is our state Senate. With the expulsion of a democrat this week the Senate is exactly where it was in June 2009, when Tom Golisano, Steve Pigeon and George Maziarz — our local heavy-hitter combo, orchestrated a complete shutdown of state government. The rules of the Senate require 32 members be present for a quorum, and you cannot have a meeting without a quorum. With the expulsion of Hiram Monserrate there are now 31 Democrats and 30 Republican Senators. It’s gotten so bad that the New York state Senate cannot even meet without brokering a political deal between the Republicans and Democrats. Say what you want about the Assembly, they can actually hold meetings.
That’s become our measuring stick for quality in the state of New York. One legislative body cannot meet without making deals and one can call a meeting without having to make deals. Ugh.
The rot has no political label attached to it. The network of political selfishness is universal.
During the expulsion vote this past week — the first such vote since 1861 — the state senator representing Niagara Falls, Antoine Thompson, tried to be cute and not sit in his seat for the vote, thinking he’d be recorded against booting his fellow Democrat. Instead he was recorded as voting for expulsion. A state senator who doesn’t even know the rules on voting is where Niagara Falls finds itself this morning.
The state Senator who represents the rest of Niagara County, George Maziarz, lectured Thompson through the press by saying: “I realize it's a difficult decision, but you can't have it both ways, you have to vote one way or the other.”
Just a few months ago, Maziarz bragged to the media about his role in convincing the now-expelled Sen. Monserrate to join with him in orchestrating chaos. Maziarz sounded breathlessly excited as he described his part in orchestrating the meeting late at night, in an Albany-area bar where no one would recognize them, so they could have complete secrecy.
Hiram Monserrate had already been indicted, and there was video evidence of him dragging his girlfriend by the hair across cement. This was already very public knowledge and a YouTube sensational video when Maziarz was orchestrating his barroom rendezvous with Monserrate.
Having George Maziarz lecture Antoine Thompson on having it both ways would be hilarious if it weren’t sad. Both of these politicians control billions of dollars that could be used for good — reviving the economy — or bad, keeping us in an economic death-spiral.
We need bold thinking in order to turn this region into something remotely respectable, and we should set a deadline. It’s the start of a new decade, so we could very easily chart progress over the next 10 years. Once the timeframe is agreed to, we need to have a list of goals that need to be achieved. After that, it’s just a series of small steps towards those goals.
The problem seems to be that we cannot frame a goal-set that proves to the politicians that there is anything in it for them. They are completely focused — this week proves it beyond the shadow of any doubt — on playing schoolyard games of he said/she said in order to look good to their constituents. Not to do good mind you, but to look good.
It’s quite clear no one looks good in our state Senate.
That’s how far we’ve fallen. It’s been slow and deliberate; it’s taken the better part of 50 years, but this is where we are today. Unless we take some harsh self-evaluations, the only change we’ll see will be a movement from 50 to 60 years of economic decline. And it’ll happen without anyone even thinking twice about it.
Tom Christy is founder of FAIR Government, a foundation dealing with local government issues. Visit www.fair-government.org. Contact him at aim1986@mac.com.
