Last week, Rick Hampson, a nationally known reporter for USA Today, joined a select fraternity in the journalism racket. Over the past four years, members have included Bill Michelmore and Joanne Scelsa of the Buffalo News, Mark Scheer and Don Glynn of the Niagara Gazette, Reporter Sports Editor David Staba and, of course, your humble correspondent.
What is it that binds such a diverse group together?
Mayor Irene Elia, who has said about each and every one of us that we make up quotes, invent stories, have an axe to grind against her personally and generally just don't know what the hell we're doing.
There was never a federal investigation into her mismanagement of money earmarked for the AmeriCorps program while she served as director of the Health Association of Niagara County Inc. Stories about it in the newspapers were merely the work of vengeful hacks seeking to derail her mayoral campaign.
She stuck to this line even after government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act confirmed that the investigation had, indeed, taken place.
Other incidents that never happened included her ejection from the Seneca Niagara Casino and her passing school buses stopped to pick up or drop off children, warning lights flashing, on not one but two occasions.
The theft of thousands of dollars' worth of asphalt millings by a city employee from the Department of Public Works? Blown out of proportion, Elia said prior to the indictments.
And these are only a few of the high points. Elia's three-plus years in office have been characterized by a series of prevarications, exaggerations and outright lies that, as often as not, she blames on a hostile press. She has gone so far as to lobby the management of news organizations for the termination of offending journalists, attempt to bully advertisers into withdrawing support for papers she considers unfriendly and even destroy copies of newspapers whose viewpoints she disagrees with.
Which brings us to Rick Hampson and his article last week in USA Today. Hampson quoted Elia describing Niagara Falls as "a city decaying."
Think about it. The mayor of our town, our goodwill ambassador to the rest of the world, our No. 1 civic booster, telling the readers of the largest daily newspaper in the country our city is rotten.
Except she didn't say it, she said. "I never said that!" she told the Niagara Gazette a day after the article appeared.
Apparently, the whole thing was a Disneyesque fabrication cooked up by this guy Hampson just to make her look bad. You can believe that if you want to, and it's likely that the 751 suckers who signed Elia's nominating petitions for the next election will believe it.
But I've been on the receiving end of her delusional denials one or two times too many. My money's on Hampson.
It will not be so easy for the mayor to talk her way out of remarks she made on Sunday, July 13, concerning the shootout at 29th Street and Pine Avenue that left two dead and four wounded. That's because the interview was done on television.
Standing at the scene of the carnage -- located in the middle of a quiet, predominantly white neighborhood -- Elia said that people from "other areas" were responsible for the violence.
"If people come here from other areas, we will ask them to go back to their area," she told Channel 4.
The black community was outraged. Still grieving over their senseless loss, some saw the mayor's remarks as rubbing salt in the wound. City Councilman Charles Walker has been asked to look into the incident and demand that Elia apologize.
Since taking office, Elia's insensitivity to minority concerns has been horrendous. Her first order of business was to shut down the city's Human Rights office, slamming the door in the face of around 40 percent of the city's population who saw the office as a court of last resort in matters of discrimination.
Her well-publicized tours of the city's most blighted neighborhoods became the stuff of jest after she refused to get off the bus she'd rented, despite the presence of numerous heavily armed police officers.
Today is the 22nd of July. Hopefully, in just 162 days, the municipal nightmare that has been the Elia administration will come to an end.
Hopefully.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 22 2003 |