10 Comments

1. thesportsroadtrip says:

   December 1, 2008 at 7:52 pm

   Chris…

   Why talk about what really is bad and dysfucntional about government? Like villages and towns overlapping and performing the same municipal services. Like the crushing burden of the Taylor Law and Wicks Law. Like too many school districts.

   Nah no need to bring those issues up. According to The Messiah – Kevin Gaughan, just whack two board seats from every jurisdiction. Better yet whack four. THAT will solve everything my friend.
2. Chris Smith says:

   December 1, 2008 at 11:31 pm

   I’ve always thought that Gaughan’s current effort stems from his inability to get traction on those larger issues. His regionalism platform was derided by those in power or those who had any skin in the game. So, the next step would be to reduce the number of people whose paychecks are affected by a reduction in the number of governments. It makes sense from a high level, but the right fight was to keep pushing the regionalism message, IMO.
3. Mike In WNY says:

   December 2, 2008 at 12:51 am

   I don’t agree that regionalism is the answer, that just dilutes the local voice of the people, as well as the accountability of politicians. The most troublesome and costly governmental problems stem from our current top-down system. We need to start chopping at the federal level, then work on the state next.

   Keeping the vast majority of decisions local gives citizens the most power and holds the politicians accountable. Our sovereignty is supposed to be derived from the people, unfortunately, that is not the case anymore.
4. buffalonian4life says:

   December 2, 2008 at 8:02 am

   All three of the previous comments on this page have gotten under my skin. At least Kevin Gaughan is doing something. What are any of you doing? I bet nothing. I bet you sit in front of your computer reading blogs and ripping other people apart all day. I truly believe, being intimately involved at the time (late 90s), that this region is never going to accept regionalism as a solution. The right jerks in the right places of power did a very good job scaring the crap out of everyone in the county, telling them that regionalism will lead to more crime and less money for everyone. I applaud Kevin for dusting off his boots and getting back in the game. Like Jim Hightower said – “Do something. If it doesn’t work, do something else.” I thank God that someone out there has the guts to do something else.
5. Chris Smith says:

   December 2, 2008 at 8:31 am

   Where did I rip apart Kevin Gaughan? I said his work is commendable.

   It seems that Gaughan has taken two bites at the apple on government reduction and both efforts have been met with resistance. The one angle he didn’t take (and I think he should have) was to reduce the regionalism message from a countywide effort to a town by town effort. Work with Hamburg to consolidate Blasdell, Village of Hamburg and Town of Hamburg services. So on and so forth.

   It was the creamy nougat of the regionalism issue. Get people to see the benefits of shared services and municipal consolidation before taking the issue bigger.
6. Kevin Gaughan says:

   December 2, 2008 at 8:20 pm

   Dear Chris and Company,

   Thanks very much for your discussion of my work, and more important, for the clear and fierce desire for a better future for our communikty that’s evident in everyone’s comments.

   I’ve been ploughing the reform rows now for over a decade. And I’ve learned a great deal — traveling to successful regions and interviewing thier citizens and politicfians; visiting each of our 45 local governments; and most important, conducting my study on the cost of local government.

   Perhaps the most importnat lesson I’v learned is that what we have here in terms of man-made and God-given gifts is even greater than we think. And the degree to which our government system holds us back is even worse than we know.

   Of course, the greatest challenge is posed by the inordinate number of governments in Erie County — 45. I take a measure of pride in leading the call for regional cooperation and consolidation over 8 years ago. But the harsh reality is that our public servants will not do it on their own.

   Indeed, we’ve all known we have too much local government in WNY for over 40 years, and no one has been able to do anything about it. After giving it consideragbhle thought, I realized that there’ a reason why we’ve failed for almost half a century, to achieve reform. And that is that there’s a missing step, a mezzanine if you will, that’s indispensible to reaching our goals.

   And that missing step is, surprisingly enough, just making some change, any change, that will restore folks’s belief in our ability to change. (Western New Yorkers healthy and very American skepticism about government has, rightly so, risen to a level of cynicism. They’ve given up. In some all way, my work is less aboaut reducing governement and more about restoring a sense of possibility in people’s minds.)

   So when I discovered a little-known law that permits citizens to force local board downsizing through the petition process, a little light went off in my head and I thought this is the answer. Witness our success in Depew, Lancaster, and soon, I hope, the Erie County legislature which is considering my proposal to reduce from 15 to 9 members, I think I’m on the right track.

   My study showed that the 439 elected officials we have in Erie County is more than 10 times the number of politicians in any like-sized area of the nation. They are not only an unnecessary cost burden, but they stand as impediments to creating consensus for change necewssary to accomplish any public effort — witness, peace bridge, waterfornt, etc. (To the writer concerned with representation, it’s a valid thought. But kindly look at my study and you’ll see that we’ve overdone it beyond any sane level here in New York State.)

   Please know as well, that the financial benefits to my plan that 45 municipalities eliminate 2 pols (90 pols in all) is not insignificant. Far beyond their compensation, the real cost of sustaining them is the life-long benefits they receive (my research revealed that over 75% of them stay long enough to qualify for benefits), which total tens of milliions of dollars.

   As perhaps you know, my plan also includes dissolving each of the 16 villages in Erie County. See, http://www.thecost.org/BuffaloNews_Gaughanwantsall16villagesinErieCountytomergewithtowns.pdf

   I made this proposal last summer based on having attended over 175 town and village board meetings during the past two years. And the law I discovered permits citizerns to accomplish village dissolutio0n through the petition process as well.

   So keep your ears open, Cap’n, as come the Spring, we’re going to start with two village dissolutions along with downsizing referenda in 3 towns.

   I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be able to do this work. I believe in government. And I believe in an activist government assisting an aspirational people. But of all the adjectives you could use to describe our present system, progressive or effective is not among them.

   All I’m trying to do is restore local government to a shape and size that will permit it to act as a boost and not a burden to our community.

   With friendship and esteem,

   Kevin
7. Chris Smith says:

   December 2, 2008 at 1:27 am

   @Mike In WNY, a big government libertarian. Interesting.
8. Mike In WNY says:

   December 2, 2008 at 4:24 pm

   @Chris Smith,
   Actually, a decentralization libertarian hoping to dismantle the federal and state bureaucracies.
9. Jgavigan says:

   December 4, 2008 at 2:51 pm

   Well said Kevin. Its nice to see that you have data to back your arguments. I am a big believer in “No handout no bailout” from the 90’s and regionalism. I hope that more people will understand that along with changes in the private sector, the public setor will need to change in order to stay competitive.