Maid of the Mist deal with Cuomo an outrageous rip-off of the public

James Glynn (left) shakes hands with Gov. Andrew Cuomo (right) after announcing stupendous sweetheart deal, disguised as “saving the Maid of the Mist.”(Photo: Maid of the Mist Facebook page).

Maid of the Mist owner Jimmy Glynn has long been known for his political connections, and the no-bid, sweetheart deal he managed to coax out of Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week is simply another in a long line of public screwings administered to the taxpayers of New York State on his behalf.

Cuomo and Glynn signed a memorandum of understanding calling for 30 more years of Glynn being allowed to run his antiquated attraction on the American side of the Niagara River. Sources told the Reporter last week that the $137 million the Maid of the Mist Corp. will be required to pay the state over 30 years amounts to less than half what might have been realized had the contract been put out to open bid.

“ Niagara Falls is a jewel,” Cuomo said. “A jewel that we haven’t invested in, a jewel that we haven’t given the attention that it deserves in my mind. But, it has phenomenal potential, not just for the region but for the entire state.”

How in the world ripping off taxpayers in order to sustain a crumbling business that has done less than nothing for the city over the four decades it’s been permitted to operate constitutes an “investment” in Niagara Falls, Cuomo neglected to explain.
Earlier this year, Hornblower Cruises inked its own 30-year deal with the Canadian Niagara Parks Commission to operate the tour boat ride at the base of the falls. Hornblower will pay $500 million for the privilege, nearly four times the measly pittance Glynn will pay under his backroom deal with Cuomo.

But the Canadians opened the process up to competitive bidding, something our governor was loath to do, since such an open and fair process would almost certainly have ensured that the politically connected Glynn would have lost out on this side of the river as well.

Starting in 2014, Hornblower will be paying more annual rent to the Canadians than the entire Niagara Falls State Park received from all its combined sources of income this year – parking, boats, souvenirs, and concessions.

The Canadian people won big while New Yorkers again took it on the chin.

Still, Glynn will be facing competition, something that he has never faced before. Hornblower has promised bigger boats, equipped with restrooms even. Dinner cruises at sunset, the opportunity to book passage in advance (rather than waiting in long lines), and other modern amenities that Glynn has been unwilling to adopt, will now become the standard.

The whole thing is ironic, since officials from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation have for years maintained that the only reason for Glynn’s no-bid contracts here was that his company was a “sole source provider,” due to the fact that the Maid of the Mist had the Canadian concession. Now that it no longer does, that bit of fiction has fallen by the wayside and the corrupt system of political patronage that has long been business as usual in New York State can be seen for what it is.

When asked why the contract was not put out to bid, Cuomo said that it was a special circumstance.

“We value Maid of the Mist. We wanted to keep Maid of the Mist here,” Cuomo said. “We had a parcel that we felt could be better utilized for tourism and we put the two together.”

Exactly how much value Cuomo and his cronies received for selling the people they were elected to represent down the river remains uncertain.

The governor had essentially forgotten that Niagara Falls existed following Niagara County ’s overwhelming endorsement of his opponent, Carl Paladino, in the 2010 New York gubernatorial race, but Glynn hired high-priced Albany lobbyist Patricia Lynch to remind him.

Lynch’s stock in trade is buying up legislators and even purchasing governors in order to benefit her clientele.

And even though it makes no sense in these tough budgetary times for New York to pass up on the opportunity to craft a deal that would sweeten state coffers for years to come, if you ever took a whiff of the stench of corruption that comes out of Albany , you would know why a smooth operator like Glynn has gotten by with paying next to nothing for the past four decades and how a crooked up deal to keep it that way was pushed through now.

“It’s going to be smart for Maid of the Mist, smart for the city, smart for tourism,” Cuomo said, justifying his violation of the taxpayers’ trust. “It’s actually going to generate more dollars.”

The governor is either a very stupid man or he is a liar. The nickels and dimes Glynn will shell out to operate his concession over the next 30 years won’t come anywhere close to what open bidding would bring or even the amount that Hornblower has already said it would pay, without the cost of building and maintaining the new docks and making other improvements necessary for the storage and maintenance of the boats.

The only honest statement concerning the whole fiasco last week came out of the mouth of Maid of the Mist President Chris Glynn, who is Jimmy’s son.

“She was in trouble, but he saved her. We are profoundly thankful that he was there when it counted,” Glynn said. “It boils down to this, Governor Cuomo has saved the Maid of the Mist.”

The real question is, “Why?”