Third Conversation in June

[BeFuddled]

I wasn't able to attend the others but I'm definitely going to attend this one!


Regionalism forum is heading for the suburbs
By PHIL FAIRBANKS
News Staff Reporter
3/4/2004

The "Buffalo Conversation" - a series of televised public forums - will move from the city to the suburbs this summer to explore how local governments can work together to create a more vibrant region.
Act 3 of the Conversation will be held at Daemen College in Snyder in early June and feature a panel of regionalism experts from across the country, as well as Erie County's elected officials and an audience of concerned citizens.

The forum, which follows County Executive Joel A. Giambra's call for a city-county merger, will look at the success and failure of government mergers and other types of collaborative efforts across the country.

"Too much of this consolidation debate has been uninformed," said Kevin P. Gaughan, a local regionalism advocate and chief organizer of the Conversation. "We need to fill that gap of understanding, and I think this forum will do that."

The forum, which will be broadcast by WIVB-TV, will examine the likelihood of structural reform in New York State and what changes in state and local law are needed to enact such reform.

Before the forum takes place, Gaughan plans to hire a local law firm to research the legal hurdles to the type of city-county merger proposed by Giambra, as well as other government consolidations. The results will be released at the event.

"We will know, once and for all, what state and local law changes need to be enacted," Gaughan said.

Gaughan has recruited a panel of experts that includes William Hudnut, former mayor of Indianapolis; Bruce Katz, director of the Center for Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution; Joan Riehm, deputy mayor of the new Louisville Metro government; and Neal Peirce, a syndicated columnist and nationally known regionalism advocate. To promote the event nationally, Gaughan said he approached C-SPAN and the cable network is interested in covering it. Over a three-hour period, two of them televised, the Conversation will start with a discussion among the experts on how they accomplished reform, continue with elected officials responding to the experts, and end with questions and comments from citizens in the audience.

No firm date for the forum has been set, but Gaughan said the tentative time frame is early June.


e-mail: pfairbanks@buffnews.com

[WNYresident]

The "Buffalo Conversation" - a series of televised public forums - will move from the city to the suburbs this summer to explore how local governments can work together to create a more vibrant region.

Start chopping all the fees and taxes. Oh make our welfare issues a federally funded issue. It's bad enough we need to support all the layers in goverment along with the regions welfare issues.

[BeFuddled]

I hear they're looking for a host Res :)

Seriously, maybe some folks from this board should consider participating.

[BeFuddled]

from today's News Editorial page:

Efforts to streamline local government hold out hope for improvements


3/10/2004

If the bridge to Buffalo's future could be built with words, Kevin Gaughan would be the world's most persistent and accomplished bridge architect. While words alone cannot shape the future, though, he still deserves credit for his dogged pursuit of informed and open discussion of this region's problems.
His latest effort in that regard is a new installment of his "Buffalo Conversation" series. In June, Gaughan will again exercise his amazing talent of gathering national, state and local experts and policy-makers into a single room, mixing them with the general public, and focusing them on a single important topic.

Earlier sessions on education and cultural heritage benefited this region by helping set an agenda. This time, it's the structure of government itself and steps toward regionalism that will drive the community debate.

Televised by WIVB-TV to increase its reach still further, this June's planned "Buffalo Conversation" will include some nationally recognized practitioners of regionalism. Gaughan's panel includes William Hudnut, former mayor of Indianapolis, and Joan Riehm, deputy mayor of the new Louisville Metro government. Including officials who have personally experienced regional mergers adds credibility to the panel, which also will feature Bruce Katz, director of the Center for Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution, and Neal Peirce, a syndicated columnist and nationally known regionalism advocate.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this latest "conversation" is that this time there will be a bit more than talk. Using some of the money raised for his regionalism efforts, Gaughan has decided to hire a local law firm to research the legal hurdles facing the type of city-county merger being proposed by the county executive. That, in itself, adds value to an important conversation. It will be difficult to make progress without knowing what legal obstacles are in the way, and Gaughan will be making an important contribution to the debate if he can help delineate the roadblocks.

Getting heavy hitters around the table to discuss the topic of regionalism will deepen local understanding of this issue, and perhaps clarify the specific steps that need to be taken to move this exercise from discussion to action. Gaughan also is seeking attendance by top state lawmakers, local government executives and town board members to offer the public a glimpse of what elected officials and others are thinking in terms of what regionalism means.

Words have power, but they are not action. The biggest irony of this effort is that the two leading advocates of regionalism here - Gaughan and Erie County Executive Joel Giambra - are not on the same political or personal wavelengths, and thus lose the power of cooperation. Both efforts suffer in the process.

Nevertheless, this "Buffalo Conversation" should be a step toward informed decisions about local governmental cooperation and ways to end costly duplication of services as Western New York struggles to fight its way out of economic doldrums hampered by fragmented jurisdictions.

• • •
A third party has entered the regionalism debate with an interesting proposal. Assemblyman Sam Hoyt has introduced a bill that would create a nonprofit corporation made up of the mayors and supervisors of all 44 cities, towns and villages in Erie County. This body would then be able to take advantage of state incentives to develop regional plans for transportation, land use, economic development and shared service delivery.

This page has been an ardent supporter of governmental consolidation as a way of reducing the duplicative layers of government in Erie County. And we still are. But Hoyt, who has enlisted nationally renowned planning consultant David Rusk from the Brookings Institution to help this effort, rightly points out that voluntary cooperation is far more likely to win support in the short term than consolidations.

And, in fact, there is no reason why the various plans being pursued by Giambra, Gaughan and Hoyt can't be pursued simultaneously. It may well be that bringing together all the municipalities will help lay the groundwork for more sweeping regionalism initiatives later.

In any event, the need to do business differently here is obvious, and the area can only benefit from a complete airing of all the alternatives.


A third party has entered the regionalism debate with an interesting proposal. Assemblyman Sam Hoyt has introduced a bill that would create a nonprofit corporation made up of the mayors and supervisors of all 44 cities, towns and villages in Erie County. This body would then be able to take advantage of state incentives to develop regional plans for transportation, land use, economic development and shared service delivery.

This sounds like what Tomac refers to as "the old Board of Supervisors" circa 1966! :)

[WNYresident]

I hear they're looking for a host Res

Seriously, maybe some folks from this board should consider participating.




Does anyone have a past video tape of one of these events?

[BeFuddled]

Not a video but this:

( If I can get hold of a vid I'll notify you right away.)


Buffalo News, The (NY)


June 15, 2003

OFFMAINSTREET



Edition: FINAL
Section: LOCAL
Page: C1








Estimated printed pages: 2



Article Text:


For comic relief, there's always Irv

Once the pent-up anger dissipated, there was hardly an institution left standing. The rancor and resentment at last week's "Buffalo Conversation" were palpable, and nearly every local leader felt the wrath.

County Executive Joel A. Giambra was booed when he tried to poke fun at County Legislator David Dale.

People actually laughed out loud when someone suggested the Buffalo Niagara Partnership is supposed to provide private-sector leadership. Even Mayor Anthony M. Masiello got caught smiling at that one.

And throughout the night, there was raucous applause every time a speaker questioned the quality of Erie County's political leadership.

One of the few light moments came when Channel 7 anchor Keith Radford explained the decline in Buffalo's status as a television market and asked Giambra why the region is losing so many people.

"It may be because Irv left town," Giambra said with a smile, referring to Radford's predecessor, Irv Weinstein.

For about the only time all night, the crowd laughed with the pols, not at them.

Getting the l'eau-down

Eau de gloom, anyone?

Marion Leblan, a visiting attorney from France, sat in on a recent meeting of Buffalo's Water Board. She's working at Hiscock & Barclay, a local firm, as part of an exchange program between the Bar Association of Erie County and the Bar Association of Lille, France.

Leblan's visit came as Water Board members prepared to raise rates by nearly 12 percent and struggled to collect millions of dollars in unpaid water bills and fines.

"She wants to see how the Water Board operates," said attorney Charles C. Martorana.

"How do you say 'down the drain' in French?" asked City Finance Commissioner James B. Milroy.

You do get a funny nose, though ...

Better to become a clown than a mayor? That was the message Mayor Anthony M. Masiello delivered in jest -- we think -- to a group of third-graders last week.

Our young citizens gathered in the mayor's second-floor City Hall office to enjoy a preview of the UniverSoul Circus, performing through next Sunday in Martin Luther King Jr. Park.

"Who wants to be mayor someday?" Masiello asked the wide-eyed youngsters.

The question prompted an enthusiastic chorus.

"Me! Me! Me! I do!" the kids shouted.

Masiello paused briefly, then offered some career advice.

"Go to medical school. Or engineering school. Or join the circus."

Some wondered if the mayor's reference was his way of grooming candidates for the Common Council.

Big stud in a small town

If there's any doubt about New York State's growing status as a breeding ground for thoroughbred horses, take a glance at last week's obituary for Spectacular Bid.

The Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, considered one of the top 10 racehorses of all time, died at Milfer Farms in Unadilla.

Unadilla?

Most people don't even know where Unadilla is. Off Main does. We've been to the tiny upstate village but, frankly, had no idea it was a hotbed of horse breeding.

It seems Bid, as he is affectionately known among fans, spent most of his retirement, the past 12 years, in the small rural community between Binghamton and Albany.

By Phil Fairbanks, with contributions from Brian Meyer.






Copyright (c) 2003 The Buffalo News
Record Number: 0306150185