New Republican Contract

[biker]

Republican Reform Contract


Posted by: Laura Steele, Anchor/Reporter
Created: 7/7/2005 10:47:11 PM
Updated: 7/7/2005 11:17:24 PM

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The Erie County Republican party is calling for reform as it endorses its candidates for the upcoming election.

At an event announcing the endorsements, candidates signed a document they drafted together called "The Reform Contract with Citizens."

Its a list of ten measures they promise to pass in January if Republicans can retake the county legislature.

1. Reduce the size of the Legislature from
15 to 9.
2. Term limits, Legislature members can only serve 2, 4-year terms.
3. Eliminate unreported discretionary spending.
4. Institute evening legislative sessions to make it easier for the public to attend these meetings.
5. Develop and implement a recall process for all the county elected officials.
6. Work with other counties across the State on real and meaningful Medicaid reform at the State level.
7. Budget reform: require the County Executive to submit only one budget by August 15th and the Legislature to pass a budget by October 15th, require Budget Monitoring Reports to be filed by the 15th of each month, require the Budget Monitoring Reports to be posted on www.erie.gov, and require an audited financial statement to be filed by March 31st for the previous fiscal year.
8. Work with local municipalities to restructure County services by contracting services with towns where such contracting is beneficial to all taxpayers.
9. Fully fund the Comproller's office so it can once again become an advocate for taxpayers by conducting regular audits and reviews.
10. Implement a Taxpyers' Bill of Rights. The new Republican majority would hold countywide public meetings to determine the content of the Taxpyers' Bill of Rights. The signers of the contract believe the Bill of Rights should be built from a ground up approach, rather than the top down.

There are a lot of new faces representing the party. Here's a look at the candidates.

*Gary Pufpaff (dist. 1)
*Julieanne Mazurkiewicz (dist. 2)
*Samuel Herbert (dist. 3)
*Joseph Totaro (dist. 6)
*Chris W. Brown, Jr. (dist. 7)
*Jeffrey Sell (dist. 8)
*Thomas Brooks (dist. 9)
*Bruce Kaiser (dist. 10)
*Brian Krauss (dist. 11)
*Janet Schumer (dist. 12)
*John Mills (dist. 13)
*David Lipinoga (dist. 14)
*Dr. Barry Weinstein (dist. 15)
*John Canavan- Erie County Comptroller



"I think the party's moving in a new direction," says former Deputy County Executive, Carl Calabrese, "we want to make sure that whoever we endorse for office is driven by our governing principles."

And according to many in the Republican party, those principles are no longer being associated with County Executive, Joel Giambra.

Channel 2's Laura Steele reports.

[biker]

Does this proposal by the Republican Party look like it has legs?

Their call for a recall provision is directly aimed at Giambra, the titular elected head of the local party.

Mr. Newt was orginally mocked for his "Contract With America," He was later credited with creating the first truly national campaign in the history of the House of Representatives.

It seems to embody some tenets of Primary Challenge candidates. Will it hurt PC more than Dems?

[Son of Liberty]

Weren't some of these candidates originally under the PC group but got the endorsement of the GOP?

As long as they don't fall into the party abyss, I don't care what party they are in as long as they heed to the taxpayer and not special interests, unions and the like.

It's a start!

[biker]

I looked at the names again, but I don't recognize any.

Don't have the PC candidates memorized.

BTW-I don't consider any PC candidate accepting a party endorsement as a "traitor". If they are succesful in their campaigns, the PC candidate will be the tradional Repub/Dem standard-bearer.

[Linda_D]

I think that these are mostly good ideas, and the fiscal provisions probably should have been in place years ago. I also think this "contract" is the Republicans' response to the fact that Giambra will be an albatross around every GOP candidate's neck in every election in Erie County until he leaves office -- willingly or not.

I do think that the Republican Party's "contract" idea is disingenuous, however, since it was the local GOP leaders who supported Giambra's practices and his smoke-and-mirrors budgets. It was GOP county legislators who voted for the budgets until 2005. In fact, as reported by the SNOOZE several months ago, Giambra had a deal with the GOP legislators back in November that would have resulted in the 1% sales tax increase being passed, and the GOP coming out looking like the "heroes". I'm not sure of the details, but Giambra double-crossed them, and "the rest, as they say, is history".

[biker]

Linda:

Your partisanslip may be showing.

Based on the record, both Dems and Repubs voted for these budgets. With one exception, IIRC, they all passed unanimously.

[Jim Ostrowski]

Can anyone give me recent examples of where Republicans, upon gaining control over some level of government, made it smaller?

Let's immediately exclude all Republican Presidents since and including Hoover.

http://www.mises.org/story/895

http://www.mises.org/freemarket_deta...er=articledate

[biker]

They are all politicians and, therefore, think the government has the ability to "make things better".

The best we can hope for is that the Repubs give lip service to smaller government and grow it less quickly.

[Linda_D]

How was I being partisan? This is a news story about the local Republican Party, which until November, 2004, thought Joel Giambra was the best thing to happen to Republicans in Erie County since Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House. In fact, back in August and September, there were Republican faithful who were thinking that "Governor Giambra" sounded really good. The only 2 Republicans who spoke out against Giambra before November were Nancy Naples and Barry Weinstein, both of whom the Republican Party leaders ignored.

The fact is that the GOP leadership ignored signs that the Giambra administration was rife with graft and patronage -- there was not just the over-priced furniture scandal but also the Aurora garage scandal -- because Giambra won elections. Republicans rubber-stamped Giambra's budgets without looking at them very closely until 2005, despite the fact that they contained questionable fiscal practices (selling ECMC to itself comes to mind), because they really liked the idea of being able to tell constituents that they cut taxes but didn't have to cut services.

That the Democrats did the same thing is irrelevant in this instance because the Democrats aren't trying to sell themselves as the party of "limited government" or "fiscal integrity" after having anointing Joel Giambra as their standard bearer and then followed him down the path to fiscal disaster.

BTW, I did say the ideas were worth while. If the Republicans were truly serious about implementing these, they wouldn't couch them in partisan terms. What they would do is introduce them into the legislature now. With all the lame-ducks in the legislature now there might be enough Democrats willing to vote their consciences rather than the party line that most if not all of these reforms might pass. Why wait until after the November elections when maybe there would be a Republican majority -- or maybe not?

[lars]

Originally posted by biker
Does this proposal by the Republican Party look like it has legs?

Their call for a recall provision is directly aimed at Giambra, the titular elected head of the local party.

Mr. Newt was orginally mocked for his "Contract With America," He was later credited with creating the first truly national campaign in the history of the House of Representatives.

It seems to embody some tenets of Primary Challenge candidates. Will it hurt PC more than Dems?

Yes it has legs. Go to the District 9 candidate thread and read Cindy Locklear's agenda, or check out her website.

Quite a number of these items are right from the desk of Barry Weinstein - in fact, they are previously submitted proposals frmo Dr. W. to the E.C. Leg which Chairman Holt effectively subdued by sending to committee for review. Once in committee, the 3 Dem majority controls what committee work gets done, hence we don't see a vote on the proposal.

Marshall and Ranzen.. did not sign which is puzzling to me.

I'm curious if they just did some "copy and paste" functions from her agenda, now up +2 months. I worked for 6 weeks starting early April to get any current E.C. Leg candidate to provide this type of information and there was NO responses beyond that of Dr. Weinstein.

These issues will be POUNDED into the voters minds except now there will be confusion because several of the PC candidates have expressed these ideas as well. Walking petition sigs and talking with potential vols on the phone day after day, I have learned that the REFORM agenda, from the Buff News article, is a BULLSEYE to attract the voter's attention. If the encumbendts do not come on board with this message, they will suffer.


It will be more difficult now, for Primary Challenge and other "unknown" candidates now that at least one of the major parties, w/ big $$ for face recognition, has begun pressin' the flesh. In fact, I strongly suspect that campaign $$ will be flowing out of the Repub coffers MUCH EARLIER this year because of the challenges they are facing through PC that have not been there in such force in the past. The primaries are now not a inconsequential blip in the election process and that's a very good development from years past.

This media move simply validates that the "status quo" political machines are officially now looking over the shoulders and behind their backs. If nothing else, reform movements as a whole over the past 12 months have clearly communicated that the era of accountability is rapidly approaching.

Lars

P.S. Principle for Progress NEVER responded to any of my emails for more information.

One I did not suspect, so disappointed, I am not. - in the spirit of YODA

[biker]

Good post Lars.

I don't know how worried the regular parties are (tho I agree they should be).

While I was passing petitions, a Dem Zone Chairman told me the houses which refused to sign the Marinelli petitions. Either he doesn't like her or they are as arrogant and complacent as ever.

Yes----I definetely went to the houses and got their sigs.

BTW-Marinelli is trying on an individual basis to do what the Repubs are trying as a Party. She's all fire and brimstone for no new hires and structural reforms. But will the voters remember?

What were her positions six months ago? Twelve months ago? Eighteen months ago?

[leets]

THey all sound like good ideas to me especially if the counties start working together to take back New York.

[steven]

Looks good. Lets see if they follow through. Im already considering voting for a repub in the mayoral race. If they ever had a chance to breaK the dems stranglehold on the area its now.

[LaNdReW]

Originally posted by steven
Looks good. Lets see if they follow through. Im already considering voting for a repub in the mayoral race. If they ever had a chance to breaK the dems stranglehold on the area its now.

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[steven]

Originally posted by LaNdReW
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