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Thread: Gaughan's Latest "Plan"

  1. #1
    Member Linda_D's Avatar
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    Gaughan's Latest "Plan"

    The erstwhile Kevin Gaughan is again busy at his idea of "reform" -- this time targeting elected officials. Maybe I should say "again" targeting elected officials because his original "regionalism" plan wanted to eliminate city and town governments, leaving one massive county government while cutting the number of legislators to 10 or 11.

    His "study" is deceptive. First, it's aimed only at the suburban and rural towns and villages -- the same places he wanted to eliminate in his original plan -- but "pads" the totals with figures for Buffalo, Erie County, NYS, and the US Congress. The figures for these "costs" are hidden at the end of his website. Gaughan's "study" also doesn't look at the total cost of the local government, including the bureaucrats and uniformed and/or service workers. It doesn't look at "perks" like government vehicles and cell phones for favored bureaucrats, either.

    I believe towns are required by state or county law to have certain positions, mostly elective, including supervisor, highway supervisor, town clerk, assessor, tax collector, and town justice(s), leaving only the place to cut "elective" officials is from the town board. In many towns, cutting two town board members might be a total of $10,000 in a town budget of $500,000 and leave only 2 town board members while leaving bigger cost centers like police services or parks and recs or sewer plant untouched. While Gaughan includes figures for elected officials and their staffs, he doesn't include the total budgets for the towns so that people can judge for themselves whether the costs for the elected officials are out of line with the rest of the budget.

    The costs for elected officials come from salaries, benefits, and perks, and it's plain that some elected officials have more of all of these than do others. Some are plainly feathering their nests, but others are operating on pretty modest outlays. Take a look at the staffing for Buffalo's 9 elected Common Council members and decide who's getting better bang for the buck: Buffalonians or North Collins residents where the "town hall" is the town supervisor's home office!


    http://thecost.org/default.htm
    Your right to buy a military weapon without hindrance, delay or training cannot trump Daniel Barden’s right to see his eighth birthday. -- Jim Himes

  2. #2
    Tony Fracasso - Admin
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    I wonder why Kevin picked who he has in the cost. My opinion is the politicians are not the bloat of the cost even though we have too many as it is. The real cost are the people supplying the services over all. Duplicate layers and in my opinion the last of work accomplished overall. When you add in perks, vacations, paid holidays, personal days, sick days etc etc etc you are paying a lot for in some cases not a lot of work done.

  3. #3
    Member concernedwnyer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WNYresident
    I wonder why Kevin picked who he has in the cost. My opinion is the politicians are not the bloat of the cost even though we have too many as it is. The real cost are the people supplying the services over all. Duplicate layers and in my opinion the last of work accomplished overall. When you add in perks, vacations, paid holidays, personal days, sick days etc etc etc you are paying a lot for in some cases not a lot of work done.
    No..... Why do we need 15 legislators?????? Why are these legislators located in remote offices???????? WHy can't they be a herd in one penn????? Lease fee, redundnant office equipment supplies and utility costs just to name a few why????? With the control board being a hard one now we do not need all this excess bagage. I knew legislators would not be affective. The sales tax needs to drop to 8% not 8.25, not 8.50, not 8.75 but 8!!!!!!!

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    "I wonder why Kevin picked who he has in the cost. My opinion is the politicians are not the bloat of the cost even though we have too many as it is. The real cost are the people supplying the services over all. Duplicate layers and in my opinion the last of work accomplished overall. When you add in perks, vacations, paid holidays, personal days, sick days etc etc etc you are paying a lot for in some cases not a lot of work done."

    $30M out of the $17B that government sucks out of Erie County taxpayers every year is a drop in the bucket but that's no reason not to take a hard look at that $30M and see if it can be cut.

    Every single dollar, every single job, every single agency and program needs to be looked at and asked about, "Why does this exist?"

    The political class assumes that all its outposts like all the IDAs will exist forever. That's what I mean when I say we have to change the mindset around here.

    Kevin Gaughan, keep up the good work!

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    For the record, the largest state and local gov. costs are:

    "education"
    Medicaid
    salaries and bennies of gov. emp.
    welfare

    "Follow the money."

    Free Buffalo did that in our latest study.

  6. #6
    Member Linda_D's Avatar
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    What bugged me most about this "study" is that Gaughan goes after the elected politicians in the suburban and rural towns, villages, and small cities, many of whom are part-timers with "real jobs", and claims about how "costly" they are, but totally ignores the city of Buffalo, even though he includes the city figures on his website.

    Sure, Buffalo has only 9 Council members, but each one is a full timer being paid between $53,000 and $72,000 plus health care, pension, and other benies. Besides that, each CC member has at least one staff member earning in the $30,000 range plus benies, and the Common Council itself has a staff of 8-12 people, mostly full time, including somebody who makes $90,000+.

    That Gaughan doesn't see anything wrong with Buffalo's bloated bureaucracy -- in fact, seems to think it's worth emulating -- is downright scary.
    Your right to buy a military weapon without hindrance, delay or training cannot trump Daniel Barden’s right to see his eighth birthday. -- Jim Himes

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    Cool

    Is Kevin Gaughan still paying himself from his Mayoral Campaign Account?

    Or did he pay himself from the stipend he took for doing this B.S. "study" from some Foundation?

  8. #8
    Member concernedwnyer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Ostrowski
    "I wonder why Kevin picked who he has in the cost. My opinion is the politicians are not the bloat of the cost even though we have too many as it is.
    Not the bloat of the cost but certainly part of the unnecessary cost in having so many. On top of that, to put it bluntly, they suck at what they do

    The real cost are the people supplying the services over all. Duplicate layers and in my opinion the last of work accomplished overall. When you add in perks, vacations, paid holidays, personal days, sick days etc etc etc you are paying a lot for in some cases not a lot of work done."
    If the services are performed well and help the community then so be it. Having a personal driver for King Joe is a ludicrous. What is the matter doesn’t Joe Giambera know how to drive???? I will teach him how to drive in Buffalo. We could pick up some small paper bags like the airlines have for every passenger seat then we will be all set.

    $30M out of the $17B that government sucks out of Erie County taxpayers every year is a drop in the bucket but that's no reason not to take a hard look at that $30M and see if it can be cut.
    If I could see the positive results of that money being sucked out then fine but what the heck is happening in Buffalo?????

    Las Vegas Nevada Boyd gaming recently acquired the Star Dust property. It is closed now but in 2007 the large hotel and casino is being demolished
    and a FOUR BILLION DOLLAR development will start. THAT IS FOUR BILLION DOLLARS AS IN BILLION!!!! That is just peanuts in the planned over TWELVE BILLION dollars in projects to be started in 2007 over there.

    The heat in the summer time in Nevada just melts your shoe soles onto the asphalt as you walk across it. Even some of the larger outdoor signs have air conditioners.

    Buffalo cannot even get a friggin peace bridge built or the old aud demolished.,…… To stop the toll collection on two toll areas that should not even be here there is this big fight that needs to take place. Now to remove the structure that is going to require Superman to come and blow them away. Man, even an Angel will get pissed with all this.
    Instead we have a cereal plant temporarily laying off employees until the first of the year. We have Motorola closing and we have two other companies who will lay off over 300 employees combined.


    Every single dollar, every single job, every single agency and program needs to be looked at and asked about, "Why does this exist?"
    Well,,,,, Well,,,,, well…… I think I have been saying that……….

    The political class assumes that all its outposts like all the IDAs will exist forever. That's what I mean when I say we have to change the mindset around here.
    Cranes, Bulldozers, large boots, and other means no more talk.

    Kevin Gaughan, keep up the good work!
    Talk is cheap.

  9. #9
    Unregistered Cgoodsp466's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Linda_D
    What bugged me most about this "study" is that Gaughan goes after the elected politicians in the suburban and rural towns, villages, and small cities, many of whom are part-timers with "real jobs", and claims about how "costly" they are, but totally ignores the city of Buffalo, even though he includes the city figures on his website.

    Sure, Buffalo has only 9 Council members, but each one is a full timer being paid between $53,000 and $72,000 plus health care, pension, and other benies. Besides that, each CC member has at least one staff member earning in the $30,000 range plus benies, and the Common Council itself has a staff of 8-12 people, mostly full time, including somebody who makes $90,000+.

    That Gaughan doesn't see anything wrong with Buffalo's bloated bureaucracy -- in fact, seems to think it's worth emulating -- is downright scary.
    Maybe the small town Jerk offs are the ones who do the most when it comes to embezzlement. Government costs me money and i dont like things that cost me money.Screw em all let God sort em out.

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    I thought after reading his costing report, that

    I thought after reading his costing report, that it wasnt just Buffalo that had to many elected politicians and civil service workers.

    By the way his reference to elected politicians can be misleading because depending on the state and municipality some offices are hired and others are elected.

    And actually Buffalo faired better in the ratio of civil service workers to population than many of the suburbs.

    But the summary of the article was that Buffalo and western ny are above the national average for an equivalent sized municipality in practically every benchmark and that hiring freezes, pay freezes, benefit freezes and downsizing are needed to bring our municipalities back down to the national averages.

    There are two things that must be said:
    1) Rarely will surplusses be returned to the taxpayer in the form of lower taxes
    2) and any sign of surpluses in Albany leads directly to decreased state assistance...
    So efficiency and benchmarking only have so much impact because Albany is the one pulling the levers and if they smell a surplus then they willl find ways to pull it back into albany's general fund and spend it someplace other than Buffalo.

    And yes there are plenty of local agencies that could easily be privatized or eliminated like MBBA, BMHA, URban Renewal, etc.

    So its something we must do but we must also know that the fruit of the results will be skimmed off by albany.

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