5 Comments

1. Chris Smith says:

   February 2, 2009 at 11:06 am

   Yesterday on Hardwick’s show, Collins kept reiterating that economic development would be the focus of his second year. We’ll ignore the fact that we’re in one of the steepest global economic downturns in 100 years and focus on the fact that Collins still has no plan to merge the various IDA’s and development agencies.

   He has an office of economic development in his administration, the ECIDA, BERC, AIDA and the various other alphabet soup of organizations that work on developing the economy. One thing that Giambra had right was his continual push to consolidate these agencies into one county level organization. Collins does not seem to be on that bandwagon and has in fact, added another layer.
2. Jaquandor says:

   February 2, 2009 at 12:02 pm

   I think that Erie County couldn’t afford all six, so we got Three Sigma.
3. Starbuck says:

   February 2, 2009 at 12:37 pm

   In his first year in any political office ever, and Collins had a few mistakes and shown some personality flaws. Also, his budget didn’t propose enough spending cuts for my taste – not the the legislature would have allowed any, but he should have tried for more.

   But he’s done good things too. Ending the Apprenticeship Law (which Giambra let stand). Taking a very strong stand in labor negotiations (stronger apparently than Giambra), which in the long run will be a very big picture issue. Saving the county $5M in the ECMC negotiation, which Poloncarz said he might not be able to accomplish. Canceling the parks deal which is bad for both sides (costing the county much more than Giabmra said it would, while city neighborhood parks have worsened).

   And didn’t Collins punish some county employees working on their own private business on county time? Compare that to the Giambra admin public works scandal.

   It’s too soon to judge six-sigma pro or con, but it’s worth trying.

   All of the above might be called “small picture”, but I’d call it doing the job he was elected to do.

   When campaigning Collins said he wouldn’t push for consolidations. As I recall, both opponents Keane and Clark also opposed consolidations too. When Giambra tried pushing for consolidations, he accomplished nothing and while he focused on that the county government was poorly managed in many ways and even scandal-plagued in a few.

   Chris, what layer has Collins added?
4. Chris Smith says:

   February 2, 2009 at 1:35 pm

   I’ve been a general supporter of Collins and the Sigma efforts and have stated as such on my blog. While I think he is arrogant and caustic, I agree that many positives have come out of the first year, many of which Starbuck noted. One that I think did not get a lot of notice was his voluntary advisory committees. He solicited resumes from the public to get people involved with planning on issues in the county. Finding fresh eyes and new blood is a great idea as we’ve been recycling the same “experts” for years with little progress.

   As for the layer for economic development, Collins spoke of it yesterday on Hardwick’s show. The Office of Economic Development is now involved as a coordinating authority amongst “various” county agencies. The Department may have been around under previous administrations, but Collins stated his intent to centralize coordination in that office. Which, is in the mission statement of the other development organizations…lots of people seem to be centralizing and becoming “one stop shops” without any coordination amongst other agencies. BNE and BNP say they are one stop shops and coordinating authorities as does ECIDA and others. Just a big mess. ONE agency handling regional economic development would be a HUGE improvement.
5. Timothy Domst says:

   February 3, 2009 at 1:00 am

   Consolidation of taxing entities will not result in lowering taxes, if every rank and file employee stays on the payroll. One thing about Kevin Gaughan is that he never mentions firing any workers, just representatives, which while good will not prevent the huge costs of public employees. I think this stems from his connection to the Working Families Party which would properly be named the Public Employees Party.

   If we had lower taxes in NYS we wouldn’t need any IDAs.