Here is an email I wrote to a constituent today, and the WS BEE article i included (names changed to protect the innocent).
Dear Ms. XXX;
First of all, while I dont disagree with you that we could go from 15 to say 9 legislators and I would support that downsizing, I do not agree that those 6 positions have anything more than an incidental impact on the County's financial problems. In fact, on a Per Capita basis, Erie County has fewer legislators than many of its Peer Counties in NYS. For example, to our north, Niagara County has 19 Legislators representing 220,000 residents vs our 15 for 950,000 residents.
I do agree with you on term limits for ALL county wide electeds and I am currently working on the details of a Resolution with Legislator Kathy Konst to propose Term Limits.
Most importantly, I suspect you have not yet been educated on all of the aspects of the proposal for a County Manager and you are making a classic mistake of disregarding its benefits, just because Joel has 18 months left on his term and there would be an overlap.
While I intend on conducting as many educational outreach efforts as possible to explain and debate the concept, I will give you some of the highlights here.
1. It is a common misconception that the County Manager is creating another layer of Government. This is a false assumption. In fact, the approach outlined by the Charter Rev Commission is "Budget Neutral" even with retaining a county wide elected Chief Policy Officer (the County Executive). This means that the consolidations and restructuing of departments and positions will NOT result in additional personnel.
2. Since I began I have believed that the Pure County Manager Form of government should be adopted. the Pure Form means, just the County Manager and a Legislature, no County exec. Now that I have been on the Legislature for almost 6 months, I can see why retaining a county wide elected seat such as "county exec" is a good idea. It boils down to the age old concept of Checks and Balances among the branches of government. In this case, one of the most compelling reasons for retaining a County Exec, is the Exec's VETO power over the Legislature. In a case such as we have now of an imbalanced blend (ie, 12 to 3), the power of veto is critical. You can see its value in the misguided Legislative initiative for legislating anticompetitive bidder qualification requirements on County Work.
3. The Professional County Manager will be NONPARTISAN, NONPOLITICAL AND INDEPENDENT OF SPECIAL INTEREST INFLUENCE. These characteristics of unfettered government as we have now, are the life blood of patronage. Please review the attached article I wrote for the Bee on this point.
4. The Professional County Manager will be held to performance benchmarks, goals and objectves and will have credentials and experience in Public Administration, Municipal Finance, Municipal Budgeting and public sector 'best practices'. NONE of these job requirements are instilled in any of the current job descriptions for the leadership positions in our government. For an entity that "manages" over ONE Billion Dollars a year, that's an embarassment.
I hope you give these facts some thought and reconsider your oppostion to the County Manager Solution. In my view, it our best hope.
best regards,
Cindy Locklear
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From:
Sent: Tue 6/6/2006 11:33 PM
To: Locklear, Cynthia
Subject: downsize
Ms. Locklear,
Part of Erie County's financial problems are based on the oversized number of
Legislators and the lack of term limits.
We do NOT need a County Manager if Joel Giambra is staying on the job.
But he and his friends have proven they are incompetent
Thank you,
Teresa