Give Bobby Newman credit for this much -- during his brief tenure as executive director of the Niagara USA Chamber, the scion of one of the Buffalo area's wealthiest families has been doing his darnedest for the local economy.
Of Erie County.
While angering his purported constituency by firing Chamber Vice President Fred Caso and alienating members at both ends of Niagara County, Newman has steadfastly funneled business south at every opportunity.
Until recently, the Chamber, like its predecessors, the Niagara Falls and Eastern Niagara chambers, administered the health-insurance plans purchased by its members.
But that means work, rather than the country-club schmoozing at which Newman excels. Since his first order of business upon landing the job in 2002 was to purge the new Chamber of much of its administrative staff, and he's too busy finding ghostwriters for his frequent columns in the Niagara Gazette to do any administering himself, Newman decided to farm out the paperwork.
"Chamber Adjusts Health Insurance Admin. to Enhance Services and Lower Costs," trumpeted the clumsily abbreviated headline in the Chamber's July newsletter.
Sounds good. Except that Newman didn't bother bidding the job out or try to find someone in Niagara County who could do the same job.
"The Niagara USA Chamber is partnering with Fringe Benefit Analysts to improve our administrative services for participants in the Chamber's Health Insurance programs," the newsletter reads.
What Newman didn't tell his members is that Fringe Benefit Analysts is located in Amherst, Newman's home town. Or how, precisely, the change is going to help anyone but Fringe Benefit Analysts.
According to the Big Lie of Chamber recruitment, cheaper health insurance is reason enough to join up and pay annual dues. In reality, any business wanting coverage for two or more people can call their insurance company of choice and pay precisely the same amount as if they buy through their local chamber. That's because chambers of commerce are charged the same "community rate" as any other group.
And if hiring a plan administrator made good business sense for the members, Newman could have put the job out for bid. Or just called Paul Accardo, whose Niagara Falls-based Flexcare, Inc. administers plans for the Pine Avenue Business Association and a number of Niagara County municipalities and school districts.
But that would have run counter to the way Newman's Chamber does business. At the urging of his pals at the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, Niagara USA Chamber Chairman Steve Braver, then the publisher of Greater Niagara Newspapers, spurned a search committee's list of preferred candidates in order to hire Newman in the first place.
Many questioned the selection of the former NOCO Energy chairman, who got the job despite scant connections to the Niagara Falls area -- the huge corporation doesn't have a single gas station within the city limits -- and questions about his ouster from the family-owned business.
The skeptics' fears came to fruition when Newman immediately started referring businesses thinking about moving to Niagara County to something called the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, a subsidiary of the Partnership that has proven itself roughly as useful as your appendix.
"We support one main contact for development inquiries for the region," Newman wrote in a letter to former Niagara County Industrial Development Agency Director John Simon in January. "We would hope that agency would then in turn be able to work with other agencies. The BNE, in our opinion, fills that role."
At the time, the BNE's board of directors included Newman's brother Michael, family friend and NFTA Chairman Luiz Kahl and former Partnership Chairman and failed Buffalo Sabres bidder Mark Hamister, with bow-tied Partnership President Andrew Rudnick serving as secretary.
In the past year, Partnership connections didn't help Hamister land the Sabres or assist Braver in keeping his job at the helm of GNN. With rank-and-file members on the verge of open rebellion, insider deals with Amherst cronies don't figure to help Newman keep his six-figure gig much longer.
When Niagara County legislators decided to hire a county manager, the rationale behind creating a new, $95,500-per-year position was that an executive would streamline the way the county does business and do the jobs formerly performed by several people.
Like preparing the annual budget.
Heh, heh, heh.
Last week, Finance Committee Chairman Dan Mocniak (D-Niagara Falls) demonstrated the sort of forward-looking thinking that helped make the Niagara County Legislature the subject of national ridicule for its squandering of its tobacco-settlement money.
"I told him I was going to operate as if there were no county manager because I wanted our budget process to remain intact," Mocniak said when asked during a meeting why legislators were still going to hold weekly budget sessions, despite the presence of Gregory Lewis, who took the county manager's job in May.
No, you certainly wouldn't want to alter a process that annually yields zero benefits for Mocniak's home district, or any other in the city of Niagara Falls, while sending a steady diet of pork to rural constituencies.
Changing the process would also mean living up to one of the promises made when Lewis' position was created -- eliminating the job of budget director, one of the prime patronage plums afforded to the party in control of the legislature.
This being Niagara County, none of those changes are going to happen if Mocniak and Company can help it.
When your local legislator comes a-campaignin' this fall, you might want to ask him or her why.
From the almost-too-stupid-to-mention department comes this gem, courtesy of, you guessed it, the Niagara County Legislature.
Lacking anything better to do, legislators are scheduled to vote this week on a resolution calling on New York State to legalize non-Indian casinos.
Still in a snit because the county didn't get to dip its beak into Niagara Falls' share of Seneca Niagara Casino proceeds, Peter Smolinski (R-North Tonawanda) proposed the resolution and got it on this week's agenda.
It's not so much the resolution's merits that are laughable, as much as its complete irrelevance.
Albany leaders made it quite clear during negotiations with the Seneca Nation that they had little regard for their local counterparts, keeping Mayor Irene Elia's administration completely in the dark until moments before the casino deal was announced.
If state officials decide widespread gambling proliferation is good for New York State -- an increasingly inevitable move, considering the state's dire financial condition -- then hello, Casino Ransomville.
But it's certainly not going to happen because the Niagara County Legislature demands it.
Whatever happens, it certainly won't stop legislators from proposing, and passing, asinine resolutions.
Maybe they can provide Washington with some advice on that pesky Palestinian situation.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 19 2003 |