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Looks like a couple of the biggest junkies in Western New York are going to have to go cold-turkey.
The cities of Niagara Falls and Buffalo, which have depended on Albany's largess to pay a disproportionate amount of their bills for the better part of the last two decades, found out last week that the trough finally went dry. With the stock market slipping even before Sept. 11, the annual bailout looked less likely. The terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and badly damaged the state's economy made it impossible.
Ever since the steel mills and chemical companies started shrinking, then closing altogether, this day was inevitable.
The reaction from both city halls, whose tenants spent most of the last 20 years alternately waiting in vain for the aforementioned industries to return and hooking up their cronies with cushy jobs, was equally predictable. Slash payroll, starting at the bottom.
Look carefully at the cuts, and the collars are almost exclusively blue -- cops, firefighters, laborers and, in the case of Buffalo, teachers. As for the department heads and administrators, their assistants and their assistants' assistants, don't worry -- they'll be just fine. Some might criticize Irene Elia's audacious decision to give Public Works Director Paul Colangelo another flunky, but, hey -- the guy's got a 2003 mayoral campaign to run.
The locals are already blaming Albany, but for once, such criticism is misdirected. Our mayors and council members were the ones who spent the tens of millions that came down the Thruway and spent it to keep themselves comfy and in power, without bothering to think 10, five or even two years ahead. After all, the next budget deficit would surely be covered by another hefty state check.
Not any more. Albany's natural tilt to the southeast got markedly steeper in the aftermath of Sept. 11, sending money to Manhattan with increasing speed.
The initial reaction to the torturously delayed casino deal -- "That's all we get?" -- was another sign of our area's incredible sense of entitlement. Never mind that the local share doubled from the initial compact announced in June.
And forget that any real boost to our civic prosperity will come from development around a casino, not the slots themselves. That would require looking to the future while coping with the present, the political equivalent of simultaneously walking and chewing gum. Just about every other municipality in the state seems perfectly capable of such complex maneuvering, but here?
No way.
Besides, hoping to solve our fiscal mess with casino revenue is overly optimistic, at best. Even if there is speedy approval by the Seneca and federal governments, the siting and construction processes figure to involve the same recipe of self-interests and litigation, spiced by labor violence, that make most development plans in Niagara Falls an exercise in futility. The magnitude of a casino project will give it the momentum to get done eventually, but not nearly as soon as anyone would like, or as quickly as the city needs to keep it solvent.
That's another reason for the muted reaction of local officials -- they're never going to get their hands on the money. The state will dole it out, dashing dreams of lush City Hall offices, brand-new SUVs for department heads and, of course, more patronage jobs.
Which brings us to the singular governmental accomplishment of Western New York's two largest cities -- making state legislators who no longer bother meeting their constitutional requirements look like noble, benevolent statesmen.
Normally, local officials ceding control to a higher level of government is a bad idea. But in this case, it's the only way.
And for state-aid addicts like those inhabiting City Hall, tough love is the only answer.