USA Niagara continues to delay FOIL request

(Above right) The USA Niagara- sponsored Niagara County Community College Culinary Institute, pits publicly-subsidized, student-operated restaurants against taxpaying locally-owned businesses, operated by people who need to make a living from their work. The cost of building this institute in the old Rainbow Mall has jumped by millions in price. You can bet some politically-connected developer got rich on that one. (Top) the proposed Hamister hotel, a USA Niagara signature project: Take one parcel of land worth millions, three hundred feet from the falls, and give it for free to a developer who helped Governor Andrew Cuomo get close to one million in campaign assistance; eliminate the other eight bidders; add ten plus million in taxpayer subsidies so the developer, Mark Hamister, can build his hotel without a dime of his own money - a hotel for a millionaire for free (what a great country) and what do you have? A USA Niagara signature project. USA Niagara exists to reward campaign contributors. The good news is that the agreement requiring the city of Niagara Falls to pay USA Niagara up to $3.1 million per year out of its budget expires 12/31, 2012. This means Mayor Paul Dyster can close almost half of the budget gap just by ending this single patronage playground. He won’t have to lay off people if he cuts USA Niagara and another do-nothing patronage haven the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corporation. The problem for Dyster is that both are larded with his network of political allies. The man has to make a choice between what is best for the city or what is best for his career. What do you think he will do?

The Niagara Falls Reporter made a FOIL request of USA Niagara back on August 2 to learn how this state agency, set up exclusively in Niagara Falls, has spent taxpayer money.

The FOIL requests we made sought all financial records. We asked for current USAN staff by job title and pay. We requested payments to all outside agencies, 3rd parties and reimbursement payments made to USAN. We asked to see the deals they made with private developers. And the “buyout” of the Old Falls Street vendors or businesses in 2008.

We want to see the money spent for the ill-advised Third Street redesign plan where they narrowed the street and seemingly drove business away.

We want to learn about their “parking study;” the Giacomo project details; their tourism marketing study and its cost. We want to know about the cost for the NCCC culinary arts school, for we understand that, like the courthouse, the culinary arts school started at one price and escalated to almost double.

We need to know about the “Hamister hotel project,” including how three men in a room: Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster, USA Niagara president Chris Schoepflin and his boss, Empire State Development Regional director Sam Hoyt decided to award the RFP to the one man who gave the most in contributions to the governor, who is, of course, in fact, Hoyt’s and Schoepflin’s boss.

We asked for renovation project costs for other downtown projects that USA Niagara contributed to, like the Jefferson
Apartments, the former Hotel Niagara and other similar projects.

In short, we want to know how they spent the people’s money.
USA Niagara has not complied, despite the fact that FOIL laws require them to respond within 10 days.

It is now more than two months.

A USA Niagara spokeswoman said last week they are still working on the request.

In 2002, when USA Niagara was created, by Governor George Pataki, the public was told USA Niagara would, in 10 short years, create in downtown Niagara Falls another Times Square by using public-private partnerships. Corporate welfare, but based on merit. It was said that the money to do this would flow from the state to the impoverished city; that USA Niagara would invest state money into making downtown Niagara Falls a playground for the world.

Unknown to most people, the reverse was quietly put into play: USA Niagara is actually funded by the city for $3.1 million per year, ripping out of the poor city’s budget almost 20 percent of its entire state aid.

Meanwhile, 10 years have passed. Downtown Niagara Falls is hardly akin to playground although USA Niagara has all the earmarks of being a patronage playground and a place to reward politically-connected developers for their service to the various governors of this state, from Pataki to Cuomo.

To date, USA Niagara has pulled more than $25 million out of the city. What have they done?

We think it is time for USA Niagara to become transparent.

(USA Niagara President Chris Schoepflin, whose salary is paid by the public, declined to return multiple calls made to him by this publication.)