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"What a great day for the people of Western New York," says Grand Island activist Russ Thompson. "It is time for Albany to wake up, we demand change and it has to start at the top starting with the removal of Sheldon Silver, the number one obstructionist in New York State. Here is a small list of our demands. The ball is in your court, we WILL hold you Accountable."
Those demands were highlighted in Thompson's speech at the Buffalo Tea Party held at the Buffalo harbour to protest taxation without representation.
Thompson's address
Demands
Sheldon Silver to be removed from leadership.
Remove Tolls from WNY
Constitutional Convention
Balanced redistricting of districts.
3 men in a room with the 4th being the special interests and the unions.
Where is the People's Voice?
We demand structural reform with in each house the senate and assembly.
One man controls everything, all legislation and what comes to the floor for a vote, he controls committee seats and chairmanships, he controls member items, pork dollars, campaign cash, if you don’t vote the way they want you to vote, you will not get what you need and in certain cases the leadership will fund a candidate to run against you.
Sheldon Silver is the most powerful politician in NY State. WHY? I did not elect him, you did not elect him, 125,000 people from Manhattan elected him yet he controls all legislation and how it affects our lives in WNY.
What we have is a dictatorship, not a representative republic as demanded by us in the Constitution. All this control must be distributed and spread out between 10-12 members.
We will never see reforms until this restructuring occurs.
We demand a Constitutional convention. Redistricting will happen after the census in 2010. We must have districts that are not gerrymandered to favor one party. We do not have competitive elections thereby we cannot hold our elected accountable and one party rule reigns.
Allow the people to vote on the separation of NY State.
Let Upstate be Upstate.
TOLLS / Transparency / Reform
All of our major commuter roads are TOLLED, we pay for our roads twice, WHY? All tolls were to be removed from the thruway in 1996 and for another 10 years we were forced to pay tolls to get into Buffalo. They were not removed until Carl Paladino threatened a lawsuit according to the LAW. At that point they were taken down, only after they realized they would lose in court. Grand Island, 74 years.
We are tired of paying commuter taxes at all the tollbooths in and around Buffalo. No more talk about moving them, we demand they be removed. If they are not we need to file a class action lawsuit to recoup all the toll dollars that were taken from us for the 10 years they were illegally collected, that is 90 Million we want back and given to the taxpayers of Erie County.
No more back door borrowing through the Authorities like the Thruway and Dormitory authorities. Our debt is at 16 Billion! Debt payments are out of control and dominate the budget.
False promises in all the campaigns; reform, restructuring, transparency? Where are they? Time after time all of our elected tell us they are running for change and it never happens. The Time is NOW and we demand it.
How can all the leadership be from NY City? Who is there to voice the concerns of us here in WNY? Why do county executives have to hire lobbyists to represent us? Isn’t that whey we have the senate and the assembly? They sell out to the highest bidder and throw us out like used tea bags.
The Erie County legislature is second in the race for the most dysfunctional. Scare tactics from them and the unions are getting rather bothersome. If they put half of that effort into real reform then we would not be in the position we are in today.
PENSIONS are and will be the next huge tax increase. 25% loss and WE will have to pay for the losses, not them. A simple move to tax pensions would get this state out of debt.
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