I was shocked, shocked, by the City Council's release of an audit last week that showed Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. Director John Percy spent scads of our money on food, booze, first-class airfare, massages and various and sundry other luxury goodies while living his jet-set lifestyle over there in India, Germany, England and wherever else he went.
The NTCC has been spiraling out of control ever since David Rosenwasser left the agency in 2006. His replacement, Percy, has convinced his board of directors that he personally needs to visit the capitals of Europe and the remote corners of Mumbai in order to get people to come here.
Percy and his board seem completely unaware of the fact that people have been coming to Niagara Falls on a fairly regular basis since before the Civil War and that most of the decent hotels here have been pretty close to full during the summer tourist season without their help for decades.
Getting people here in the summer is not the problem. But the inability of Percy's staff to do simple arithmetic is. In 2008, a bonus Percy was to receive on top of his $128,000 salary was miscalculated, first at $69,420 and then later at $25,000, which he received. The audit report said that the actual bonus should have been $11,812, and it remains to be seen whether Percy will pay back the difference.
Another problem is the NTCC's board of directors, which apparently never approved any bonus at all.
The NTCC receives the bulk of its funding, about $3 million annually, from the city out of its meager share of slot-machine revenue from the Seneca Niagara Casino and the bed tax here. That's your money, earmarked to improve the lot of the city and its residents.
Percy and his board would have you believe that the $18,736 they spent for "massage therapy services," the $18,579 they spent on one trip to India, or the $300 bar tabs they rack up regularly in this or that tony European hotel are benefiting you.
Unfortunately, the only one with the authority to do anything about this is Mayor Paul Dyster, who has, during his nearly three years in office, shown a singular inability to do much of anything. Asked whether Percy would stay on as head of the NTCC, he punted responsibility to Percy's own board, which thinks he's doing a fabulous job.
In other words, despite a flurry of newspaper headlines and television news accounts last week, things will remain pretty much as they always have for Percy and the NTCC. And the people of Niagara Falls will continue to foot the bill for one man's mad and extravagant lifestyle.
Way to go, dysfunctional city government!
It's not going to surprise anyone if Carl Paladino beats Rick Lazio for the Republican nomination in this year's gubernatorial election, a fact that speaks to the depths of voter dissatisfaction not only in New York, but around the country as well.
The state Senate will likely revert to a Republican majority, and state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is saying privately he expects to lose 20 to 25 seats in that body. One of those is currently occupied by Rep. Francine Del Monte, whose decade-long record of failure has often been spotlighted on these pages.
Voters are fed up, and who can blame them? We've got a guy in the White House who promised change and then delivered 10 percent unemployment. In New York, the Governor's Mansion is occupied by an unelected chief executive who has managed not to get himself indicted yet, and who is replacing a guy who resigned in disgrace following a prostitution scandal.
And our state Legislature is seemingly incapable of doing anything to curb the rampant excess that makes New Yorkers the most taxed people in the country.
In Niagara County, the Legislature is a one-party affair, with the highly vocal Democratic super-minority calling constantly for law enforcement to investigate this or that trivial matter, in the desperate hope that they can make some Republican look bad. An observer from anywhere else could easily get the impression that the Democrats in Lockport actually represented some lunatic fringe organization.
And in Niagara Falls itself, we've got a crackpot mayor who seems convinced that environmental tourism will one day thrive in a city known for Love Canal, that people will all of a sudden embrace train travel as they did during the 19th century, and that the city was in reality a hotbed of Abolitionist activity and played an important role in the Underground Railroad 150 years ago, despite the lack of a single shred of evidence to support the notion.
Combined with the weakest, most ineffectual City Council in recent memory, a city administrator who spends much of her time in another city, and an economic development department that seems to operate off of a list of the mayor's campaign contributors, and you've got a municipal government that has no compelling reason to even exist.
Carl Paladino may very well be the GOP candidate for governor this November, and the politicians who have allowed this city, this county, this state and this country to slide into decay and gridlock deserve him.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Aug. 31, 2010 |