While the financial problems currently being experienced by the county's Industrial Development Agency have far more to do with the care and feeding of the moribund Inducon Industrial Park building than with efforts to bring the Niagara Falls International Airport under local control, the powerful Buffalo Niagara Partnership has a vested interest in seeing the airport fail, and has mounted a full-court press to make sure that it does.
Sources told the Reporter this week that the Partnership, along with the Niagara USA Chamber, county Legislators Bradley Erck and Malcolm Needler, the Niagara Gazette and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority are engaged in a concerted effort to keep the airport closed to commercial traffic.
"The only trouble we're causing is that we want to get our airport back for the people of Niagara County," said former IDA board chairwoman Shirley Hamilton. "And they don't want us to have it."
Niagara USA Chamber CEO Bobby Newman is the scion of the NOCO Energy fortune. NOCO has a monopoly on jet fuel sales at the Buffalo airport, where fuel costs are among the highest in the nation. The family also owns Prior Aviation, which handles cargo at Buffalo Niagara International Airport and charter flights at its nearby airstrip -- two more potential areas of competition from a revitalized Niagara Falls International. In other words, Newman's family could stand to lose a significant part of its income if the IDA push for local control comes to fruition.
Erck sponsored an abortive attempt to place Newman on the IDA board of directors last year, a move that failed when Legislator Renae Kimble pointed out that, as a resident of Erie County, Newman's appointment would be in violation of state law.
Undeterred, the Buffalo Niagara Partnership had its "governmental affairs" expert, Kevin Schuler, move to Newfane and qualify for residency. Needler and Erck then gave Schuler the seat on the IDA board, firing Hamilton and board member Jim Briggs in the process.
The hope of the Buffalo interests is to derail a $22 million airport proposal put together by the IDA.
"Now they've gotten their cronies on the IDA in order to ensure that the airport proposal is dead on arrival," said Block Club President and community activist Roger Spurback. "It's an old boys network that includes the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority and Niagara County legislators of both parties."
Hamilton said that the ouster of her and Briggs from the board, and the forced resignation of IDA Director John Simon, will not deter the effort to regain local control of the airport.
"It wasn't a setback for me, but it was something of a setback for the people of Niagara County," she said. "You've got these people coming in from the outside and they do, absolutely, have an agenda. And that agenda is not in the best interests of the people who live here."
Spurback said that the Buffalo Niagara Partnership's record of failure in Erie County makes Niagara County an enticing target.
"Now that Niagara Falls is creating jobs due to the casino, these people want to be a part of something successful to make up for their miserable record in Buffalo," he said.
And what a record it is.
In the past five years alone, the Partnership has backed such failed schemes as wiping out even more of downtown Buffalo to build a new convention center even as the old one sits woefully underused, building a rust-prone steel twin to the Peace Bridge in the face of evidence that a single concrete edifice would be more durable and less expensive, and closing Children's Hospital, which serves thousands of families per year from the area and around the country.
In each case, Partnership CEO Andrew Rudnick insisted that the plans were in the public interest, whether the public liked it or not. And in each case, grassroots opposition squelched, or at least stalled, the self-interested plots cooked up in the Partnership's executive boardroom.
And as each push fizzled, Rudnick lashed out at "obstructionists" who had the audacity to question the ways in which his small cartel of creepy rich guys wanted to spend their money.
Most recently, the Partnership demonstrated its ineptitude when the chairman of its board of directors, Mark Hamister, attempted to, for lack of a better word, purchase the Buffalo Sabres with a combination of $40 million worth of taxpayer money and loans based on the assumption that such public largess would be forthcoming.
In an effort to support Hamister's bid, the Partnership launched a hastily conceived "Business Backs the Sabres" campaign, aimed at selling season tickets, even with the National Hockey League schedule underway. Using the slogan, "It's our team, let's keep it that way," the campaign was a clumsy attempt to bully a fan base still smarting from revelations that the previous owners, the Rigas family, had used the team and its parent company, Adelphia, as a personal piggybank.
Predictably, "Business Backs the Sabres" sold but a handful of tickets. Just as predictably, the Partnership lost all interest in the hockey team the moment that Hamister's "bid" collapsed, a development which followed the failure to shake loose even a fraction of the required tax dollars.
After Hamister exited the hockey stage, in came Rochester billionaire and serial gubernatorial candidate Tom Golisano. Last week, the bankruptcy court overseeing the Adelphia case and the NHL's Board of Governors each gave their blessing to Golisano's bid, with the sale expected to close within a week. That development brings the worst nightmare of Partnership honchos to fruition -- someone doing business in Buffalo actually willing to spend their own money in an effort to spark a long-dormant local economy.
Despite the string of high-profile failures, the Partnership is not without unhealthy influence in Western New York (now known in some circles as Buffalo-Niagara, thanks to well-placed schmoozing with the management of the Buffalo News).
Last fall, the Partnership financed the push to downsize Buffalo's Common Council in the name of "good government." In reality, the initiative was aimed at getting rid of Council President James Pitts, one of the few city officials to question the lavish tax-funded entitlements to which the Partnership's inner circle has become accustomed.
In Niagara County, the Partnership financed blatantly anti-union studies that urged local governments to cut jobs and services. The studies, heartily endorsed by the Greater Niagara Newspapers chain, provided the blueprint for Niagara Falls Mayor Irene Elia's to-date futile war against the city's unionized employees. Not coincidentally, GNN Publisher Steve Braver serves as chairman of the Niagara USA Chamber's board of directors and holds a seat on the Partnership's board.
Then there's the airport mess. First, the Partnership's stooges on the NFTA tried to give the facility to Cintra, a shadowy foreign company with no discernible long-range plan to revitalize it. That didn't work out, due to public outrage, security concerns after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the simple fact that it was a dumb idea.
But for all their hypocrisy and scheming, give the folks who drive the Partnership's self-interested agenda this much credit -- they don't give up easily. And if they get their way this time, the "arrivals and departures" board at Niagara Falls International Airport will stay just as it's been for the last three decades -- empty.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 15 2003 |