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Merging Niagara County's three primary business advocacy groups earlier this year was a simple matter of common sense. One larger, organized voice for the beleaguered business community had to be better than three organizations more concerned with competing for members than advancing their cause.
At least in theory.
But three months into the life of the Niagara USA Chamber, there's good reason to wonder exactly whose interests are being promoted.
In the June, 2002 Business Insider -- Niagara USA's newsletter -- President and CEO Robert L. Newman wrote, or at least signed, a message to members that Mayor Irene Elia might want to keep handy come re-election time.
"Mayor Irene Elia and her administration have stated that their top priority is to reverse the city's fiscal plight. ... Mayor Elia is determined to keep fighting for Niagara Falls and the business community in both Niagara Falls and Buffalo have joined her in that fight."
In a clear effort to use the words "Buffalo" and "Niagara" in the same sentence as often as possible, the letter goes on to laud the Buffalo Niagara Partnership's Who Spends What? Commission, which claims the city can save somewhere in the incredibly vague range of $9 to $15 million by following its equally nebulous recommendations.
"Perhaps the most significant piece of the Who Spends What? Commission report is the issue of the City's health benefits programs for employees," reads Newman's missive. "We strongly encourage both the unions and Administration work together to resolve this critical issue."
To date, the administration has shown an interesting way of "working together" with its employees. In a letter published in the Buffalo News' June 4 editions, Elia herself outlined the strategy for "reversing the damage caused by the failed fiscal policies of the past."
"We have made significant strides toward that goal by reducing the city deficit and implementing measures that have produced significant cost savings for the city, such as becoming self-insured for workers' compensation and enforcing the cap on city employees' health insurance costs."
Actually, that should be "tried to enforce a cap that no one outside my inner circle believes to exist." Elia's clumsy effort to impose a spending limit on the city's insurance contribution resulted in a series of lawsuits by most of the employees' unions. In each case, State Supreme Court Justice Ralph Boniello issued injunctions preventing the city from withholding a single penny from anyone, citing testimony from ex-Mayor James Galie and others in his administration that such a limit only existed for the self-funded option.
With time running out on the state Court of Appeals' current session, the city's ace labor attorneys from Albany -- Roemer, Wallens & Mineaux -- may have to wait until the next session in October to argue Herroner's case.
In the meantime, union officials say they'd rather negotiate than see more of the city's limited funds go for legal bills.
"There's no quick win here for the administration," said Marc Merino, who succeeded the late Larry Lang as president of United Steelworkers of America Local 9434-01. "Let's sit down, get an arbitrator and negotiate."
Aside from reiterating her belief that if you repeat something often enough, it will become true, Herroner twice cited the Who Spends What? report in her three-paragraph letter. Roughly half of the potential savings "found" by that august body come from reducing health care costs -- somewhere between $3.8 to $8.2 million.
Which sounds pretty good, except that the city has legally binding contracts with the unions that the courts have already upheld in the cap fight.
Elia also praises the Buffalo Niagara Partnership in her letter. While that organization has accomplished little during the reign of President and CEO Andrew Rudnick beyond periodic name changes, it has proven quite adept at such fanciful "studies." Another cleverly titled Partnership committee -- Who Does What? -- "found" $48 million in potential savings for Erie County, using methodology equally suspect as that used in Niagara Falls.
The Partnership's increasing coziness with the Niagara USA Chamber goes beyond wishful thinking. The June Business Insider also contained a back-patting item entitled "Organizers of Niagara USA Chamber Lauded for Leadership," which detailed the Partnership's recognition of Newman, as well as Joan Aul, former chair of the Niagara Falls Area Chamber, former Niagara Business Alliance chair Kelly Brannen and Niagara Gazette publisher Steven Braver, the chairman of the Niagara USA Chamber's Board of Directors.
Braver's prominent role in the Niagara USA Chamber raises troubling ethical issues. Since Niagara County has no television station of its own and only one radio station actually located within its borders, the Gazette serves as the primary source of information on the Chamber's activities.
"The ideal thing would be for publishers not to be in a position where they had to lobby for things outside their own businesses and put themselves in a position where people begin to wonder whether the things they're lobbying for will be translated into news coverage," said Aly Colon, head of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "Those kinds of relationships raise questions. It needs to be very clear to the newspaper, the publisher and the public how the three of them will deal with each other as a result of the experience and what steps are taken to maintain the veracity of the coverage."
The coverage of Braver's Chamber by Braver's newspapers (he also serves as publisher for the county's two other dailies, the Tonawanda News and the Lockport Union-Sun and Journal, as well as the Medina Journal-Register) hasn't exactly been the stuff of "60 Minutes." The papers, all owned by the Alabama-based Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., have provided gooey profiles of Newman and cheered on the amalgamated Chamber, but haven't explored several questions commonly asked by Chamber members:
Newman's curious career path from running the chain of NOCO convenience stores to a job that consists of shaking hands and sitting in lengthy, self-important meetings still awaits an explanation.
Not that he or his family will be applying for food stamps anytime soon, with a compensation package roughly double that of Chuck Steiner, past president of the Niagara Area Chamber of Commerce.
Interestingly, while a Gazette profile of Newman cited his stewardship of NOCO, the company never located a single store within the city limits of Niagara Falls.
Perhaps Braver's advocacy of Newman to head the new Chamber stems from similarities in management philosophy.
Since Newman took control, new accounting practices led the Chamber to extend its cycle for paying bills from one month to three months, several vendors said.
And the practice of paying an estimated cost to Independent Health for member insurance instead of the actual bill led to a number of local business people receiving a letter last spring telling them their policies had been canceled.
In both cases, vendors and employees of Greater Niagara Newspapers experienced similar situations.
While at NOCO, Newman served as head of the New York Association of Convenience Stores. That group virulently opposed the ability of reservation stores to sell tax-free gas and cigarettes. In its propaganda, NYACS routinely cited revenues "lost" by the stores and the state, ignoring the basic concept that you can't "lose" what you never had in the first place.
The organization's consistent efforts to gut the most profitable on-reservation industry did little to endear Newman to Seneca leaders, who tend not to easily forget past slights.
Mounting unrest among Partnership members nearly ended Rudnick's 15-year run as the organization's President and CEO last summer, before his cronies on the board of directors (including Newman's father, Reg) ignored the wishes of many members and extended his contract.
John A. Polvino of Commercial Print and Imaging in Buffalo voiced some of the sentiments shared by unhappy members in a Sept. 5 letter to the Buffalo News.
"Having read Andrew Rudnick's Aug. 21 letter to the editor, I would ask the Partnership and Buffalo Niagara Enterprise (a subsidiary of the Partnership) by what standards do they believe they have done a good job?" Polvino wrote. "What are the measurable standards of performance they adhere to? To any private business owner, these results have to be categorized as nothing less than abysmal.
"The bickering and turf battles are really a subterfuge for keeping the area economically deprived of reaching its fullest potential. If allowed to grow and prosper, people like Rudnick would lose the power they strive so hard to maintain."
While Braver evidently views the likes of Rudnick and Newman as vital players in the community and the Partnership and Chamber as having a key role in the revitalization of the region, others in the industry disagree.
"A chamber of commerce is like a (prostitute) without (genitalia)," legendary newspaperman George Sample said Saturday during an interview in Corry, Pa. "Neither is capable of performing the job for which it is paid."
While Braver holds a cherished seat in Elia's kitchen cabinet and calls the shots at the Chamber, the Niagara Falls Reporter maintains a somewhat different relationship with both groups.
Several City Hall sources report Herroner has resumed ordering city employees to throw away copies of the paper supposedly available to the public at the building. And despite its status as one of the few downtown businesses to not only last almost two years, but actually grow, the Reporter was disinvited from joining the Chamber after being approached during a membership drive.
"We've certainly got better things on which to spend our money," said Reporter Publisher Bruce Battaglia.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 11 2002 |