OLEAN -- Every once in a while, since I reached the age of reason, I've heard residents of upstate New York, particularly Western New York, talk about "seceding" from New York City.
The thought-to-word process usually took the form of mumbling and grumbling about some new fiscal atrocity dreamed up by Big Apple legislators and visited upon the upstate regions, which benighted Manhattan residents seem to think is generally centered somewhere around Peekskill. More often than not, I was amused. Now, I am paying attention.
There is no logical reason the New York City area should remain governmentally attached to the rest of the state. The interests of its five boroughs, Long Island and Westchester County are not the interests of the rest of the state, especially not of our region. New York City and environs should be a separate state. Hell, they should probably be a separate nation.
The great, gaping maw of Gotham is bleeding us pale. Were it not for the unjustified and sheep-like American devotion to round numbers -- 50 states and all that -- the idea of separating the metropolitan area from the rest of this failing state might even interest Congress.
One of the recent inequities that caught my eye still seems unbelievable to me. The New York Post claimed in its sometimes overheated columns that Manhattan workers -- with numbers inflated, of course, by the mammoth incomes of Wall Street nobles -- are the highest paid in the country, earning an average of $147,000 this year, an increase of almost 17 percent over 2006. The national average is somewhere around $46,000 a year. This was based on numbers for the first quarter of 2007 compiled in Washington.
The average downtown New York worker, making more than three times what other Americans make? That figure seems impossible, of course, with all the justified moaning and crying over poverty in New York City. And yes, I realize the other four boroughs -- Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens -- are much closer to national reality than Manhattan. But there it was, certified federal Bureau of Labor Statistics for the first three months, extrapolated for the year. Manhattan financial workers alone averaged $528,000 in annual incomes, up 25 per cent over 2006 -- which of course boosted all the other annual income averages in the borough.
So, my question is: Does a rising tide float all boats? Don't bet on it.
The pay bonanza story appeared just before Thanksgiving, the same day Gov. Eliot Spitzer successfully leaned on the Metropolitan Transit Authority to postpone a 12.5 percent hike over three years in daily fares for NYC commuters, a plan that would force the average subway rider to pay only a quarter more per one-way ride.
This magnanimous effort by the state's chief executive came only a sunset or two after Spitzer whined to Western New York residents that he has no constitutional say or any real power to influence a greed-inspired plan by the jerks on the New York State Thruway Authority -- an entity with a structure legally parallel to the MTA -- to mandate hefty toll hikes of 20 percent over the next three years for our upstate region.
Spitzer said he arranged the "big win" for NYC riders because "right now riders are facing tough financial times." Helloooooo, Mister Governor, does $10,156 a week in salary -- the average down in the neighborhood where you used to have your offices -- seem like "tough financial times" to you? Of course, I realize most Wall Streeters have little concept of what the subway is like, employing stretch limos and helicopters to get to their downtown offices.
Didn't that Ivy League education of yours include basic math? Many hardworking folks up where I live won't see that kind of real income in a decade, much less in a year. This dichotomy of action reminded me of our late Nelson Rockefeller -- a pretty good governor and later vice president -- who nonetheless had no idea whatsoever of what the common man's income was. Rocky once remarked something close to this during a budget explanation to reporters in the late 1960s: "...now you take your average working guy's income of $100,000 a year ..."
Why not figure out a creative way to channel a little dollop of that new mammoth figure you Manhattanites are all so proud of to help the 57 counties outside of New York City that will spend more than $2.5 billion on Medicaid this year alone? This despicable arrangement, the only such one in the nation, leaves upstate counties spending about 20 percent of their budgets on Medicaid when fewer than 15 percent of their people are on the rolls -- compared to the 35 percent of New York City residents on Medicaid.
Gotham's millionaire suburbanites get a proximity break also. The suburban counties surrounding New York City spend only 12 percent of their huge budgets on Medicaid.
My little county is so aggravated about this blatantly raw deal the leaders have taken to printing out the portion of my hefty county tax bill that goes to Medicaid. My salary, considerably above average for my county, is only a tenth or so of what the average Wall Streeter makes, yet I'm subsidizing Manhattan's Medicaid expense with almost $800 on my county property tax bill alone, to say nothing of hidden costs in sales taxes, to say nothing of all the corruption, waste and fraud in New York City Medicaid we all read about.
I can tell you this: The average income in Western New York didn't jump 12 percent last year. Many good workers and responsible residents of Buffalo, Niagara Falls and their respective counties are moving to the Carolinas so fast that Charlotte and other cities are sending up "job fair" recruiting teams to keep the flow going. There are so many Western New Yorkers in the Raleigh and Charlotte areas they gather in their "own" taverns on winter Sundays to watch Buffalo Bills games. (Actually, this phenomenon occurs all over the more prosperous regions of the nation.)
Gov. Spitzer, you know this to be true. You campaigned on this very subject. That's why Western New Yorkers are so disappointed in you. You seem tone deaf to our plight. You are the candidate, after all, who likened most of upstate to "Appalachia."
Even though that wasn't true, we were happy to see you taking notice of our fiscal desperation. Now, do something about it.
Kick some tail in that do-nothing, New York City-controlled legislature you complain about. Do what the New South did more than a quarter-century ago in attracting all that foreign investment where so many of your former citizens hold good jobs -- cut taxes. It was the proven attraction for new firms and growth in employment. I know. I covered it.
Start with the Thruway mess. It cost $600 million to build that toll road. It was finished in the mid-1950s. The promise sold to the nervous New York taxpayers who financed it then was tolls would be removed when the bonds were paid off. My father explained that to me as a teenager. Every governor who came along in my young adulthood said the same. The bonds were paid off in 1997 -- a decade ago.
The Legislature couldn't wait to re-authorize the tolls, and then increase them whenever it thought the motoring populace would swallow it. If you don't take this on, you face a general boycott of the Thruway usage -- even in this age when taking back roads and side streets will cost more in gasoline -- that will mean even less income for state coffers than today's.
Lead a public movement for reform of the Legislature and our constitution. When Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver -- by himself -- decided this state should not have the right of initiative and referendum, we knew what that was all about. Power. Unfair displays of power that will continue to hurt us upstate.
There was a time, more than three decades ago, when you could have called upon the state Senate majority leader for help, instead of getting into political trouble with a Republican. You could have relied upon Niagara County's Sen. Earl W. Brydges Sr. for help. He was one of the fairest and most far-sighted politicians ever to climb steps in Albany. He would have protected his Western New Yorkers and all of upstate against the unabashed greed and short-sightedness of New York City. He died in 1975, a few years after retirement, and Western New York has been going downhill ever since.
Fail to take the lead, and you face seeing your beautiful, once-prosperous state dissolve. Even New York City politicians are entertaining the idea for secession."
They think the metropolitan area could do better on its own. So do we.
Last year, Queens councilman Peter Vallone Jr. claimed New York City is actually getting short-changed by $3.5 billion a year in Albany. He contended New York City schools get far less per pupil than upstate. He revived the notion of "the 51st state."
Take him up on it. Commission a fairness study, fairly staffed and fairly led.
Then commission a Secession board that will study the matter. Then let Vallone have his ballot initiative. Split the state at the northern edge of Westchester and Putnam counties. Each resulting state would then be 10th or 11th in national population. Then we could match incomes and taxes and job and other figures on how we'd do. Sounds fair to me.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Nov. 27 2007 |