If you haven’t already noticed, I’m a big opponent of cheesy rhetoric to make a valid political point. When people don’t like something related to health care, they bring up “socialized medicine”. When people think someone is being heavy-handed in some way, there is invariably a comparison to fascism or Hitler or Nazis or something else that is wholly out of proportion to the actual thing being complained-of. When Ostrowski doesn’t like public funding for libraries or cultural attractions like theater or museums,

he calls them special interests with their hands out and their hands in the taxpayers’ pockets.

It’s the rhetorical use of “special interests” that gets me. Free Buffalo itself is a special interest for anti-taxation, anti-government Libertarians. So there.

I’m Jim Ostrowski, President of Free Buffalo, but I will give only my own personal opinions today. There are lots of lobbying laws out there that, ironically, make it more difficult for groups like ours to exercise their first amendment rights.

If a group is to maintain non-profit status and have donations to it be tax-deductible, it has limits on its lobbying capabilities. Free Buffalo could be a political action committee and lobby all it wants. It could even run or endorse candidates. Hell, it could be its own political party if it wanted to.

Erie County is suffering through 45 straight years of decline; decline in our population, our economy, our culture and our way of life. At the same time, however, government on all levels got bigger, spent more of our money and barked ever more orders at us. One thing followed the other: bigger government shrank the economy and population.

Then, the best sentence ever:

Anyone who denies this is in a state of denial.

Except county government has gotten smaller, at least since the 2004-05 budget crisis. City government has shrunk, as well. It’s also become much more efficient based on anecdotal evidence and CitiStat metrics. Can more be done? Yes. But slash & burn is what Ostrowski proposes, and I don’t think slash & burn is in anyone’s best interests.

According to the Tax Foundation, Erie County has the 7th highest property taxes in the nation as a percentage of assessed value. While these taxes include county, municipal and school taxes, as Free Buffalo member Dave Bailey told the Orchard Park Town board this year, “everyone in the lifeboat must put an oar in the water.” You must do your fair share in cutting the cost of government in this county. And please, we don’t want to hear about Monroe County, which has higher taxes. We’d rather hear about Erie County, Pennsylvania, whose taxes are $800 lower.

Erie’s doing very well by the way. Lower taxes give their citizens more money to invest in business and maintain their properties. Ten percent of the workforce in Erie County, PA works for the government. Here, it’s 17 percent. If we’re getting something for that extra seven percent of the workforce, please tell me what that is. Alleghany County where Pittsburgh is located, also has a figure of 10 percent, so please don’t tell me it’s because we have a larger, more urban population.

No, but I’d wager that it has to do with something altogether different.

The only way to turn this area around is to reduce the government’s consumption of our capital. You people have to spend a lot less of our money, in other words.

The consumption of our capital has a lot to do with our Capital.

Albany isn’t Harrisburg and vice-versa.

Caution. Metaphors ahead:

Corporate welfare and pork barrel projects will not do the trick. They’re bread and circuses. They’re zero sums games. They take from some and give to politically-connected others. They rob from the poor and give to the rich as with Bass Pro. They are moving the decks chairs around on the Titanic.

I’ll resist the temptation of asking what happened to that $14 million this body appropriated for Bass Pro. Down the old memory hole, I suppose.

And please don’t tell me about mandates. You know and have probably supported the very same people who have imposed them. Talk to your friends and your fellow party members in the State Legislature, the Governor’s office and in Congress and demand that the mandates be lifted. Stop supporting their campaigns. Stop taking their campaign money.

The county legislature can only do so much unless Albany gets the hell out of the way. You cannot change years’ worth of Albany politics with a simple “talk” with state legislators, demanding that mandates be lifted. That’s really not the county legislature’s job.

It’s your job and my job. It’s all of our jobs. While it’s easy and makes for good TV/radio to hector the legislature for its support given & received from state legislators, the real question comes down to the individual voter. Why did you re-elect Dale Volker? Mary Lou Rath? Why did you send Sam Hoyt and Mike Cole back to Albany? Money buys influence, but it doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Laura Monte had a great campaign going, for the most part but she still only mustered 30% of the vote. That’s thanks in part to gerrymandering. How the county leg gets a wag of the finger for that vis-a-vis the Assembly is anyone’s guess.

The simple fact of the matter is that the county is saddled with loads of unfunded mandates. The vast majority of the county budget is made up of money for things over which the county has little or no discretion. The “special interests” that were asking for funding to maintain our quality of life are fighting for scraps.

As for Medicaid, every single member here is either a Democrat—whose party brags about starting Medicaid, or a Republican, whose party said about Medicaid, “Me too,” as it is wont to do.

1965 isn’t the problem - 2006 is. New York’s Medicaid program is not only rife with fraud, but is also more expensive than that of Texas and California combined, and more comprehensive a program than any other state’s. The state has capped county contributions towards Medicaid, but hasn’t cut them yet. It’s a federal program that the states are to co-administer, but New York is somewhat unique in that it tells the counties what to do, and then makes them pay for it, too. It’s high time we had a statewide discussion about whether the program we administer is too bloated.

Compare New York and California - both states are bright blue. California has 35 million residents; New York has 19 million. California spends less than $34 billion for its 10 million enrollees. New York spends almost $43.5 billion for its 4.5 million enrollees - the highest in the nation. New York spends $7,580 per enrollee - the highest in the nation. California spends $2,520 per enrollee. There is something dramatically wrong with that. It’s also something over which the county legislature has no discretion or say.

Getting down to cases, what should be cut? As Free Buffalo outlined in its analysis of the 2006 budget, these things can be cut:

1. Employee compensation; it’s too high, 28 percent too high; if the unions won’t budge, lay off enough workers to accomplish the same results and the unions will come back to the table faster than a speeding bullet to restore those jobs.

Or strike the shit out of us, so we can all have a little Taylor Law party.

2. Pork and corporate welfare; this stuff is an economic loser, it corrupts the political process and makes real change more difficult. As Free Buffalo proposed, corporate welfare should be banned in the County Charter in the strongest possible terms.

One person’s pork and corporate welfare is another person’s retention or attraction of significant high-paying jobs that would otherwise go to…oh, I don’t know…Erie, Pennsylvania. To call it pork and corporate welfare is a rhetorical device. Some of what we’re talking about certainly qualifies. Others - like Geico - don’t.

3. Funding for culturals. Mr. Giambra brags about increasing funding for ”cultural organizations.” There is, however, one cultural organization he overlooks, the Erie County family struggling to pay its bills in an overtaxed, depressed economy. What gives you the right to take scarce dollars out of our pockets to give to museums and concerts halls? Besides, cultural organizations should be independent of politics, not the lapdogs of politicians. Free Buffalo is currently trying to raise funds for two cultural organizations, a Grover Cleveland Library and Museum and a Hall of Fame for those who have contributed to individual liberty throughout history. We will not accept a penny of government money for those projects. That way, we can maintain our independence and speak freely on all controversial public issues. Culturals should be funded from the discretionary dollars of those who support the values promoted by those culturals. We don’t expect those who don’t agree with us that Grover Cleveland was a great president to subsidize our venture.

If you have an Albright-Knox or a Shea’s, you attract people to downtown. They buy tickets, pay to park, eat food, drink drinks, maybe even get a parking ticket or two. Sometimes, people come in from way out of town and eat more meals and pay to sleep here. Cut public funding for these attractions - funding that permits their very existence - and you’ve just pissed away a huge part of our quality of life. Is Buffalo the same place if that struggling family has an extra $10 in its pocket, but nowhere to spend it? We can stick a Target in the Albright-Knox and a Dollar General in Shea’s.

4. The NFTA. They’re a large, wealthy bureaucracy running an antiquated, nineteenth century public transit system. It’s time to get the NFTA off the dole. Deregulate public transit and get some competition in here. Without competition, innovation will not occur. If the NFTA was in charge of transportation in 1900, the horse and buggy industry would still be thriving.

A 19th century public transit system would involve streetcars pulled by horses. We’re running a borderline 21st century transit system with a mix of light rail and bus service - the buses featuring decidedly modern diesel hybrid technology. There already is competition. It’s called taxis. Good luck finding one of those on the street because insurance rates are sky-effing-high for taxi fleets. We need improvements to the NFTA, and yesterday’s post about furniture from Wall or JC Deceaux is a first start to taking some of the cost away from the taxpayers.

If these and the other recommendations of Free Buffalo’s report were enacted, we could afford a large tax cut in property taxes, the sales tax or both.

Erie County has two choices, roughly similar to the choices facing the Soviet Union in 1945. We can change now or we can change later, after we’ve wasted another 45 years and after the utter devastation of our community which is sure to follow if we continue on the present road to nowhere.

There’s another rhetorical device - compare Erie County to the Soviet Union. In 1945, however, the Soviets didn’t have much of a choice, frankly. They took over the areas of Europe that they had occupied after defeating the Nazis, and completely absorbed the Baltic states. It wasn’t until Stalin died in 1953 that there could really be any sort of reassessment of Soviet life - that didn’t culminate until Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika post-1995.

Plus, we have a pluralistic form of patronage mills. Dems, Repubs, “Independents”, and Conservatives all play the same little game. The Soviets had only one player - the CPSU.

The legislature needs a balanced budget that doesn’t play games with projections and doesn’t spend down any reserves we have lying around. They have to help us to weather the current budget crisis storm so that when we come out the other side, we can look at ways to decrease sales and property taxes to ease people’s lives. We can’t cut and slash everything, but we should examine the efficiencies of everything and make sure government is putting our money to good use.

The real reform - the real tax relief that Ostrowski and other seek - has to come from Albany. It has to do with the unfair, manipulative use of county taxing authority to pay for Albany’s policies and programs. It has to do with the lack of discretion in our budget. It has to do with excess Albany spending with no accountability. It has to do with buck-passing, gladhanding, and turf protection. Someday it will change, but only when the ire is directed at the appropriate parties.

The state budget ultimately is hashed out by three men behind closed doors. Just opening those doors and letting some sunlight in might do wonders for this state, and the people’s perception of it.

Alan Bedenko is the author of the website BuffaloPundit.com and a contributing author to many other blogs. He is the president of the WNY Coalition for Progress. This column originally was posted on BuffaloPundit.com

© Alan Bedenko, 2006.

The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not represent those of the WNY Coalition for Progress.