Business as usual won't work for panel that needs independence, expertise


6/16/2003

If nothing else is clear about the pending creation of a financial control board for Buffalo, it should be this: The time for business as usual has passed.
Decisions about composition and powers of the board, which should be settled within a week, must spring from a specific understanding that what Buffalo needs is not simply a balanced budget - anyone with a calculator can do that - but a restructuring. Control boards may not typically be in the business of reform, but without fundamental change in how this city makes financial decisions, a control board's success can be nothing more than temporary.

That is why the control plan Gov. George Pataki announced last week is superior to the one proposed by State Comptroller Alan Hevesi. The comptroller's plan, which has its own strengths, would endow a board with less authority while dispersing responsibility for its actions among seven political leaders, each of whom could make one appointment to the board and might well expect to control decisions by those appointees.

Pataki's proposal would create a board with enhanced powers and would concentrate accountability for the board's decisions. By reserving for himself a majority of appointments, responsibility for the success or failure of the board would land on his desk.

Specifically, Pataki would create a seven-member board, for which he would name five members, one of them on Hevesi's recommendation. The other two members would be Mayor Anthony Masiello and County Executive Joel Giambra or their designees.

Any plan requires the approval of the State Legislature, though, and Assembly Democrats are pressing to give appointments to Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, perhaps by expanding the board to nine members.

That could be an acceptable arrangement, since it continues to give Pataki a majority of appointments and the full share of accountability. The problem with it - indeed, the problem with any plan that allows senior elected officials either to serve or to name members - is that appointees could be selected merely to function as the politicians' puppets. In the end, that would give Buffalo nothing more than a new take on business as usual.

That is a real concern. Any Buffalo control board demands not just competence but expertise. Its members also must have enough independence to inspire confidence that tough steps toward financial recovery will not become mired in political considerations, state or local. This community - and this newspaper - will be watching closely, to ensure those mandates are met.

To that end, the already-proposed appointments of two former state comptrollers - H. Carl McCall and Edward Regan, who also was a former Erie County executive - is a sound start. Both have expressed interest in serving, and while they were powerful politicians on their own, both have both the experience and the integrity to do the job that Buffalo needs.

All appointees need to be similarly suited to the crucial task at hand, and it will be important to closely monitor this process to ensure that they are. These are not patronage positions, to be filled by people whose only task is to take orders from a political patron. The only boss here is the economic health and well-being of the City of Buffalo.

Each appointee should have the financial expertise, the independence and the strength of character necessary not just to make the balance sheet add up, but to give Buffalo its best shot at an economically healthy future. That mandates an additional quality: a mind-set that understands that simply raising taxes or diverting county revenues to the city is not a sufficient answer in an area where taxes are already high and services are often duplicated.

No tax increases should even be considered, if at all, until taxpayers can be sure they are not simply throwing good money after bad. Wasteful or inefficient labor contracts should be renegotiated, on pain of holding up future raises, or reconfigured to provide the best possible protection at the lowest responsible cost. City-county mergers should be pursued wherever they make sense.

City expenses must be reduced. If that requires layoffs, it will continue to be up to the mayor and his administration to make sure the city receives the best possible services with a reduced work force or reduced facilities. If the children of this city must see hundreds of teachers laid off, then a proportionate number of uniformed, blue-collar and white-collar jobs also should be on the line.

The goal must be nothing less than to reinvent government in Buffalo in a way that is respectful of all constituencies, but whose prejudice is toward creating a city that can once again thrive.


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