Once in awhile, someone (usually my mother) says that we at the Niagara Falls Reporter pick on Mayor Irene Elia too much.
So I want to give credit where it's due.
Congratulations, Mayor Elia, on your success in defeating that nasty city charter. And all it took was months of bureaucratic foot-dragging, a few personal attacks on volunteers who donated hundreds of hours of their time creating a document you asked them to devise, and some incredibly vague legal hemming and hawing. Oh, and a few thousand dollars spent by the mysterious Citizens for Better Government.
It's funny how no one seems to know who actually makes up this committee, which also bought advertising for Elia's valiant bid to wrest control of the city's public libraries away from foolish people who actually wanted the system to serve the people who pay for it. In two weeks of informal polling, zero percent of city residents surveyed had any idea who makes up the group or what precisely its mission is, beyond supporting the mayor's side in such referenda.
If you'll recall, the same group bought ads in June, 2001 opposing the creation of an independent library board. A few truly cynical types even suggested that this "committee" consists of one person, and that Herroner herself dipped into her bank account to fund the opposition to both ballot initiatives. That's just mean.
The Niagara Gazette's advertising department isn't telling anyone, even its own editorial staff, where the money came from for ads that ran leading up to Election Day. But, as soon as the campaign finance filings for the final two weeks of Campaign 2002 become public, we'll be sure to clear that up.
While Elia again incorporated the proven campaign tactic of trying to scare senior citizens into believing their taxes will skyrocket if she doesn't get her way, it didn't work nearly as well this time around. When the last absentee ballots were counted last week, the plan to streamline and professionalize our answer to Tammany Hall failed by just 208 votes out of nearly 9,000 cast.
This despite a lack of any advertising in favor of the referendum, or even the sort of educational publicity state law requires of municipalities in such elections. Thankfully for those who want to keep the mayor's position one coveted only by financially independent retirees and power-mongers, Elia once again resisted the constraints of a law she didn't like, and ignored the publicity provision.
Like she did in the library vote, Elia didn't allow facts or reason to cloud the issue, instead turning the vote into a referendum on her personal credibility. Remarkably, though, the only side actually campaigning barely won, even after flouting the law in the process of stacking the deck in its favor.
In the months before the vote, Elia and her various taxpayer-funded mouthpieces insisted that they had nothing against the charter, not even the provisions that would put several of them out of a job and increase the mayor's salary, guaranteeing a robust field of challengers in 2003. It's just not quite ready yet, they kept saying.
It would be nice if they put the charter commission back to work, told them what specific items need clarification, and put the issue back on the ballot next year. Maybe Elia could even take some of that $100,000 she's bent on giving the brilliant-yet-winless Albany lawyers to fight the city's unions on making sure voters know what exactly the charter entails. But don't hold your breath.
And in the end, Herroner's "victory" may prove not only hollow, but self-defeating. For all the political contortions and stonewalling, a measure few political insiders thought had any chance of passing (especially given the mayoral salary provision) extended the election by more than a week before finally going down to defeat.
If such votes are a true gauge of Elia's popularity, as she insisted after winning the library vote, she's got a lot of work to do if she has any serious thoughts about winning a second term. Or even earning a place on the ballot.
I tried, Mom. I really did.
One aspect of Elia's first term that set her apart from her predecessors had been the relative peace between her office and the City Council. While open warfare with the council paralyzed the mayoralties of both Jake Palillo and James Galie within months of taking office, Elia has enjoyed a fairly supportive legislative branch, especially since Fran Iusi, Paul Dyster and Candra Thomason took office.
Some might even accuse the three of occasional lap-dogism, but that, again, would be mean. While the three may lack the tenacity of the political street-fighters who dominated council for decades before their arrival, Iusi and Dyster showed last week that they've got some political sense, even if such independent thought means opposing Herroner.
During a meeting Wednesday, the pair said they're willing to consider restoring some of the three dozen jobs Elia wants to eliminate in the fire, police, water and sewer departments. And they're not convinced the administration really needs the slew of white-collar jobs Elia wants to create and fill with political patrons.
Dyster and Iusi echoed the very vocal taxpayers who demanded reasonable levels of service at a protest the week before and besieged council members with letters and phone calls. While the local daily blamed these irate citizens for the area's economic woes in an tortuously reasoned editorial after the protest, Dyster and Iusi wisely avoided such a patronizing reaction.
Since Vince Anello and Charles Walker already oppose Elia's draconian cuts, especially while she's trying to lard up City Hall, the council could wind up drastically altering Herroner's proposed budget. That would almost unavoidably mean higher taxes. And a 2003 campaign in which Elia attacks the council that forced the increases, vilifying the same people that once supported her.
A journey to the city's official Web site (www.niagarafallsusa.org) is pretty funny. Unless you're looking for any actual information.
The five sections of the site purportedly maintained by the city's, um, "webmaster" lead to identical error messages (though nice photographs of Elia, City Assessor Dominic Penale and an empty council chamber thankfully survived the techno-carnage).
To make sure this wasn't due to any computer-related deficiency on my end, I tried accessing the site through five different browsers on two separate computers.
Links for the municipal water plant, library system, school district, state tourism and state parks work just fine, mainly because they lead to sites that have no connection to niagarafallsusa.org. A link labeled "economic development" leads, appropriately enough, to a site under construction.
This must be terrific for prospective businesses thinking about investing in Niagara Falls, or individuals thinking about moving here. Don't laugh -- odds are there are at least a few of each. There's no indication on the site as to who set up this internationally available disaster. Then again, I wouldn't go around bragging about it, either.
The last line of that ubiquitous error message unintentionally says it all: "It may not be a database that your application recognizes, or the file may be corrupt."
Make up your own jokes.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 19 2002 |