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ESPN commends Reporter on Maid coverage

AP Photo/David DupreyThe Maid of the Mist (kickbacks not shown).

(ESPN’s brilliant Gregg Easterbrook (left) took time to notice something that people around here are just too dumb to notice or care about: the lousy deal New York State is getting from the Maid of the Mist - a story broken by the Reporter.

While the Canadians took notice and did something about it - they went out and got themselves a new lease and a new operator and some $300 million more in rent for the same boat tour, New Yorkers stand mute and stupid and broke and do nothing. In any event, Easterbrook on his popular “Playbook” took note and a funny thing too, thousands of people logged on to read our story which Easterbrook recommended.

Here is the article exactly as it appeared on ESPN’s Playbook:

Over the Falls: TMQ contends a reason the national debt is growing at a shocking pace, yet the economy stays soft and hardly anything new is being built, is that government waste and corruption are more pervasive than commonly understood.

Big examples come from the defense and entitlement budgets; little examples are like this. The Niagara Falls Reporter, that increasingly rare breed of independent local newspaper, reports on suspicious New York State contracts for the Maid of the Mist tour boats that ply the waters under Niagara Falls. Publicly owned facilities on the New York and Canadian sides of the falls are used by the boats. On the Canadian side, a newly inked deal means the operator pays 35 percent of its gross revenue for the lease. On the New York state side, a no-bid contract allows the operator to pay just 4 percent to monopolize use of public land.

Reporter Frank Parlato dug deeper into the contracts and found that in addition to paying almost nothing for the property lease, the New York operator receives the lion's share of revenue from a state-run observation deck near the boats. The result is that although Maid of the Mist excursions are packed with tourists -- last time I took one, there was an hour-long line -- recently New York State paid the boat company "a net of $584,000 to be a tenant." Regardless of whether arrangements such as this result from incompetence or corruption, the bottom line is that the public is harmed -- government debt grows, and either taxes are raised or services reduced. No private enterprise would pay a company to be a tenant.

(WILL WE GET A FAIR SHAKE? WHO WILL BE THE NEXT OPERATOR OF THE BOAT TOURS?
Next week, the Reporter will present some shocking revelations about New York’s Maid of the Mist boat tour and how the new Canadian tour operators, Hornblower Cruises will pay $10 million more per year, and also provide a better boat tour. We promise some revelations about the direction the governor may take with the boat tours in New York.
Read it exclusively in the Reporter.)

 

 

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com Oct 30, 2012