There's a sucker born every minute, they say, and lately it seems as though many of them have managed to get themselves elected to the Niagara County Legislature.
Take Billy "The Bumpkin" Ross, or Mal "The Mark" Needler, for example.
A few months ago, a snake oil salesman from up Buffalo way arrived in the sleepy burg of Lockport. He was Buffalo Niagara Enterprise Chairman Thomas Kucharski and he made Ross and Needler an offer they couldn't refuse. He asked them for $50,000.
Now most sane, rational people who hadn't just fallen off the turnip truck would ask, "What for?" But no one is accusing either Ross or Needler -- who serve as the legislature's chairman and majority leader, respectively -- of being either sane or rational. Or sophisticated enough to know a con job when it's being pulled on them.
They took one look at Kucharski's shiny store-bought suit and shiny shaved head and figured they were now dealing with a regular mover and a shaker. Whatever he was selling just had to be good.
Legislator Dennis Virtuoso wasn't so sure. Wasn't Thomas Kucharski the same guy who screwed up the deal with that German chemical company, Wacker Chemie, that wanted to locate in Niagara County? And wasn't the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise associated with the similarly named Buffalo Niagara Partnership, whose chairman, Andrew Rudnick, had recently issued a statement saying any investment in Niagara Falls International Airport was a waste of money that could be better spent in Erie County?
Well, yes and no, Virtuoso was told. And that's where the $50,000 came in. In return for the money, Niagara County would be given a seat on the BNE board of directors. That way, when representatives from a German chemical giant show up and say they want to locate in Niagara County, Kucharski would actually put them in contact with some people in Niagara County and they wouldn't go back to Dusseldorf and build their factory there.
As far as any relationship between the BNE and the BNP, Kucharski said, there was none, despite the fact that Partnership Chairman Rudnick also serves as the second in command at the BNE, that BNE head Kucharski also sits on the Partnership board's executive committee and that no fewer than three other Erie County representatives -- Randall Clark of Dunn Tire, David Smith of National Fuel and Brian Keating of HSBC Bank -- also sit on the boards of both organizations.
But Kucharski's word was good enough for Ross and Needler, who whipped their Republican majority into line and passed the $50,000 appropriation in June. After all, they reasoned, it wasn't their money.
And that was pretty much the last anybody in Lockport heard from Kucharski until last week. It seems that Andrew Rudnick came out and endorsed plans by a company called NRG Huntley to build a clean coal-burning power plant in Tonawanda. Huntley is competing with AES, which already runs such a plant in Somerset, for the $1 billion in new public and private investment and creation of 1,200 long-term construction jobs for the winning bidder.
For the geographically challenged, Tonawanda is in Erie County, while Somerset is in Niagara County. And for those who need to have a picture drawn, the incomes of both the Partnership and the BNE derive significantly from toadying up to the moneyed interests of Erie County.
Rudnick was wearing his Partnership hat while making his endorsement, putting aside the fact that he's also the second in command at the BNE, which doesn't make such endorsements. At least that was Kucharski's story.
In a condescending four-page letter to Niagara County Industrial Development Agency director Samuel L. Ferraro, Kucharski told Ferraro the grumblers here don't know how good they've got it. Using bureaucratic gobbledygook that made several readers wonder whether English is his mother tongue, Kucharski explained exactly what that $50,000 had bought over the last five months.
"Our team has brainstormed, along with your staff, creative ways that we can foster even greater collaboration going forward. Working on development of land surrounding Niagara Falls International Airport, review of the Empire Zone program's regionally significant project designation criteria applicable to projects within Niagara County, assisting with the 'Explore Buffalo Niagara 2007,' creation of an economic development special section in the Buffalo Business First Book of Lists and creation of collateral pieces and creation of a comprehensive web site are just a few examples of the many ideas and opportunities we discussed," Kucharski wrote.
Really. He really wrote that, using 93 words to sum up what exactly the BNE has done on behalf of Niagara County in the five-plus months of its one-year, $50,000 contract. He might just as well have written, "We talked about some stuff."
Even more comical was Kucharski's continued attempts to foster the fiction that the BNE and the Partnership aren't basically the same mob of creepy rich white guys who've run Buffalo into the ground for as long as anyone can remember.
"Buffalo Niagara Enterprise works closely with the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, as well as a number of different organizations throughout the eight counties of Western New York," he wrote. "It is vital that I express to you that we are two different organizations with two separate boards and two separate funding streams."
The boards could be seen as separate, unless of course you count Rudnick, Clark, Keating, Smith and Kucharski himself. And as for the "funding streams," we'll pretty much have to take Kucharski's word on that, since neither the BNE nor the Partnership are very open about how much money they take from whom.
"This is highway robbery," said state Sen. George Maziarz. "They've taken money from the people of Niagara County and got away without doing a thing for it. It might be legal, but it's nothing short of extortion."
Virtuoso, who argued and voted against the BNE contract in June, agreed.
"We were told that this group was going to lobby for Niagara County and attract new industry here," he said. "Now they have their first chance to do that, and they're basically telling us to go fly a kite."
Kucharski's wretched mishandling of Wacker Chemie, his obvious indifference to what would be the largest economic development project ever undertaken in Niagara County and his condescending attitude toward public officials so bold as to question his wisdom or motives should make him persona non grata here, Virtuoso added.
"There was never anything about this deal to suggest that it would be a benefit for Niagara County. Why the Republican leadership in the Legislature was so hot for it is a mystery," he said. "Once again, they've left us sitting around like a bunch of victims here."
On Wednesday, Virtuoso plans to introduce a resolution formally calling on the BNE to assist the Legislature in attracting the clean coal plant to Somerset. He said that, while he realizes there is little chance for the organization to reverse itself, he wants it made a part of the public record.
"I don't want to see this thing get pushed through again next year," Virtuoso said. "These people are vultures and the only interest they have in Niagara County is how much money they can take back to Buffalo."
As for Ross and Needler, sources said they were last seen heading for the dee-partment store, where they planned to buy "a couple of them thar' shiny suits" to wear to the annual fancy dress ball the BNE has at Christmas. They were even going to get some shiny shoes, they said.
They wouldn't say how much Kucharski charged them for the tickets.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 5 2006 |