Welcome to Western New York, the land that government forgot.
Except when it's time to slide a hand into your pocket.
If truth were required of civic advertising, that slogan would be printed on signs alerting motorists entering the region from Canada, Pennsylvania and via the New York State Thruway from the east.
The Thruway Authority can certainly afford it, particularly after jacking up the rates on a roadway that was supposed to become toll-free nearly a decade ago.
While anyone using the Thruway feels the pinch of the May 15 increase, it should come as no surprise that Western New York received a punch to the gut, as well.
For reasons as unfathomable as how a public agency created to built and maintain one very long road morphed into a multi-billion dollar corporation accountable to no one, the Authority also collects tolls at four spots along the I-190, an ostensibly "free" roadway connecting the mainline Thruway and Buffalo to Niagara Falls and Canada.
To be fair, the increases were the first in 17 years. The tolls were initiated to pay off the bonds used to build the Thruway in the 1950s and state officials swore up and down that, as soon as that debt was satisfied, New York would join most other states in maintaining its roads with all the other taxes already being collected.
Those bonds were retired in 1996, by which time no one seriously expected Albany to make good on its promise, thanks to the stunningly low expectations New Yorkers have for their elected leaders.
But while tolls on the bulk of the Thruway rose 25 percent for passenger vehicles and 35 percent for commercial traffic, drivers who use the I-190 got socked with a 50 percent hike. Meanwhile, the Thruway Authority doesn't own any of the appendages that run through other upstate cities, not even Rochester's I-390, I-490 and I-590, so motorists there and in Syracuse, Albany, Utica and Binghamton continue to enjoy a toll-free commute. Nor are there toll barriers on Authority-controlled roads downstate, like I-287 and I-84.
Which is about par for the course around here.
In Niagara Falls, New York State and its various subsidiaries have reaped billions in profits from the Power Authority's hydroelectric plant and the park surrounding the cataracts, entities that remove thousands of acres of prime real estate from local tax rolls.
As a way of saying thank you, the state gave more than 50 acres of downtown Niagara Falls, along with the city's convention center, to the Seneca Nation in 2002 so that Gov. George Pataki could look like a local hero in an election year.
Another state-sanctioned body, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, keeps Niagara Falls International Airport dormant in favor of its wealthier cousin in Cheektowaga.
In Buffalo, the NFTA squats on prime Lake Erie waterfront land it has owned for nearly half a century, while the Thruway Authority's site selection for the I-190 saws the city off from the Niagara River.
Pataki's idea of compensating the Queen City for all that is by giving away more land for another casino someplace in Erie County.
After years of apathy over the treatment dished out by Washington, D.C., Albany and the countless county, city, town and village halls throughout the area during the decades the area's economy has been free-falling, the Thruway Authority's money grab struck a nerve.
The morning show on WEDG-FM (103.3) spent last week encouraging drivers to pay the inflated toll in pennies. The hosts, Tom Ragan and Ted Shredd, and show staffers made change near the South Ogden Street barrier in South Buffalo and dispatched a producer to do the same on Grand Island one morning.
"It's a revenue stream for New York State," Ragan said. "They're making money without raising taxes and they're not going to do anything about it unless enough people scream and yell."
The "Penny Protest" was conceived after callers flooded the show's phone lines each time the toll increase was mentioned. Deputy Erie County Clerk Kathy Hochul, who is also a member of the Hamburg Town Board, got her boss, County Clerk David Swarts, to jump on board.
Shredd and Ragan have been on the air for more than 10 years, and are more commonly identified with gimmicks like "Bras Across Niagara" and "Lick It for Tickets," promotions that don't require a lot of explanation except to point out that the licking in question was of inanimate objects such as a plate of hot sauce and restroom porcelain. The Penny Protest marked a departure into the world of political activism.
"Most of what we do is comedy-minded, but this is both," said Jim Kurdziel, the show's producer. "It's funny, but it's also accomplishing something civically. This is the first thing we've done where politicians backed us up."
Friday morning, an organized squadron of penny-payers went through the South Ogden Street barrier in order, snarling traffic at the height of the morning commute.
Besides the penny-by-penny slowdown, another participant paid with a $100 bill and insisted on a receipt. While some Thruway workers got a chuckle out of the whole thing -- "I'm here for the same amount of time no matter how many cars get through," said one man -- others took it far more personally.
One man parked his truck on the other side of the fence from the protesters and started berating them with a blend of obscenities, mixed metaphors and snippets he'd apparently memorized after spending far too much time listening to Rush Limbaugh. He refused to give his name or confirm that he was a Thruway worker. His rear-view mirror bore the orange E-Z Pass transponder given to Authority employees, however.
A Thruway spokesman scoffed at the protest and said the Authority has spent $243 million on the Niagara Section since 1988, while taking in only $154 million.
Most of the expense, though, stemmed from the reconstruction of the section in the late 1990s -- the only major repair on the Niagara Section since it opened in 1960. And those figures didn't include the regular Thruway's toll booths in Williamsville and Lackawanna, which force commuters living south and east of the city to pay two or more tolls going to and from work.
According to the Thruway Authority's Annual Report for 2003, drivers in Western New York paid more than $20.7 million in tolls that year at the Grand Island, South Ogden Street and Black Rock barriers. Not to belabor the point, but that contrasts rather starkly with motorists in all other upstate cities, who paid a combined total of zero.
That disparity tweaked protest participants still harboring anger over another penny-themed controversy, the budget meltdown that followed Erie County Executive Joel Giambra's badly failed attempt to tack another 1 percent onto the local sales tax.
While the live-broadcast portion of the protest officially ended on Friday, Shredd said the station's Web site (www.wedg.com) would continue encouraging the irate to keep paying tolls in pennies, as well as e-mailing state officials.
"Between the pennies and the e-mails, we're hoping somebody will get the message and stop treating us like this," Shredd said.
The Niagara Falls Democratic Committee endorsed only one candidate for the three seats on the City Council that will be contested this fall, setting up what figures to be a wide-open primary in September.
Council Chairman Charles Walker received the lone party endorsement as he seeks another four-year term.
Declared candidates Glenn Choolokian, who won a special election last year to fill the seat vacated by Vincenzo V. Anello when he became mayor in January 2004, Joe Schiro, Sam Archie, Chris Robins and Sam Fruscione will compete for the remaining two Democratic nominations if each garners the required signatures when petitioning begins June 7.
"They're all strong candidates, and we felt it was best to leave it open," said new Democratic Chairman Mickey Rimmen.
Running a campaign that stressed his independence from the Democratic Party, Choolokian toppled incumbent Jimmy Stewart, who had the party's endorsement, in a primary last September. Choolokian went on to defeat Republican George Lodick in the general election. Archie served as Choolokian's campaign manager last year, as well as during an unsuccessful run for mayor in 2003. This time around, the two are running in tandem.
Though Tom Scozzafava's candidacy was announced in an item in The Other Paper, Rimmen said he hasn't been in contact with party officials.
The committee also endorsed Chief City Court Judge Mark Violante for another 10-year term. In county legislature races, the Dems endorsed incumbents Renae Kimble in the Second District, Dennis Virtuoso in the Fourth and Sean O'Connor in the Fifth.
Two incumbent Democratic legislators, the First District's Jason Murgia and Rebecca Cuddahee of the Third District, did not seek the party's endorsement. The committee voted to back Stewart's challenge of Cuddahee. Kimble also faces a primary challenge from political newcomer Tateanna Jenkins.
From time to time, a reader will ask why the Niagara Falls Reporter doesn't write more about the Lewiston-Porter School District.
The latest round of idiocy concerning the Lew-Port School Board goes a long way toward answering that question.
During a heated exchange over the board's refusal to rehire a number of qualified, accomplished coaches for the fall season because, well, just because, the usual display of bitter grudges and petulant name-calling gave way to threats, or at least what some board members perceived as threats.
All of which confirms a long-held theory: These people take things way, way too seriously.
Between school board members who let the tiny bit of power they wield go straight to their heads and residents who don't think teachers should make enough to live on -- particularly if their own children have grown and moved away -- it's just about impossible to identify any winners in the most inane long-running feud in a region flush with inane long-running feuds.
Certainly not the kids -- the ones these geniuses claim to be so worried about.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 31 2005 |