As for the eggs you speak of, the County Executive race and the Leg Chairmanship, are much more complex and not really Lenihan’s fault. The County Executive race shook out like this the Dems had 4 candidates who probably couldn’t win in a competitive race, there was Paul Clark, who had endorsed Joel Giambra and his history of raising taxes made him extremely unlikely to win a general election (a side note on the depths of deceptive campaign Collins went to, the 70% tax increase he attacked Keane for was an increase for $1.00 per 1000 to $1.70 per 1000, the 50% tax increase Keane attacked Clark for was approx $11.00 per 1000 to $17.00), Lynn Marinelli, who was basically one of the two faces of the budget crisis and who had no ability to raise money (if she did she would have been the nominee Keane vs. Clark vs. Marinelli, all she would have had to do was let them duke it out and secure the womens vote, about 58-60% of the primary voters, and won pretty easily), Dan Ward, who is a good guy but is too stubborn to do what it takes to win a major campaign, and Jim Keane, another one who probably couldn’t win the general election, but had the two most popular politicians in Erie County Brian Higgins and Byron Brown supporting him. Keane was in the race to stay as long as Clark was in the race, and Clark was in the race to stay as long as Keane was. Lenihan would have liked to endorse Marc Poloncarz, but Poloncarz hasn’t really built up the political operation he would have needed to wage a primary and Democratic HQ would have a hard time keeping him competitive financially with Higgins and Brown backing Keane. Plus bucking the two of them and then losing the primary would definitely had made Lenihan vulnerable. Ultimately, the Giambra endorsement guaranteed Clark would never get the nomination, and of the other 3 Keane was the strongest and could raise the most money. Lenihan made the best move he could, and beside that race, wiped the floor with the Republicans, cleaning them out of Tonawanda, easily won the county court and supreme court race, and won the two competitive leg races handily while Collins won both districts by over 50 points.

What happened in the Leg Chairman race was more about Lynn Marinelli’s ego than anything else, but it started when Larry Adamczyk was replaced as Board of Elections Commissioner, continued when a partonage position Marinelli tried to create for Adamczyk was blocked, and got worse when she didn’t get endorsed for County Executive. Marinelli was never a great chair, she is a little flakey and often struck deals with Giambra without consulting with her caucus, while I’m not privy to what actually happened, I suspect that the decision was made not to support her because against Collins they needed a face with a less negative image and who would be capable of doing battle with him. Of the possible choices of new Chair, Tim Kennedy was just not ready, Bob Reynolds could have been in serious jeopardy of losing reelection is he was the chief foil to Collins, and Tom Mazur still has “rumor” problems, which left Maria Whyte. Whyte had strong backing with Sam Hoyt, but is just too liberal to be Chair, which is what ultimately cost it. Reynolds probably could have won he was really in it from the beginning, but a Chairman losing reelection would have looked real bad. Marinelli in the mean time put together a coalition of the whatever, getting Kathy Konst who actually has the most to gain in terms of reelection from this, Barbara Miller Williams who likely did it in exchange for jobs for Grassroots, Tom Mazur who wanted to get his buddy and political whore Dave Pfaff a job, and Tim Wroblewski whose just generally an untrustworthy rat. However it is likely the last term for Marinelli, Mazur and Wroblewski who are all very vulnerable in primaries.

If a Democrat tried to pull that, people would be screaming bloody murder.

I’m not complaining about screaming. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t happening. I expect screaming about almost everything Collins does as long as he’s in office. Shortly after the election I commented here a prediction of just that, and suggested Collins should ignore it as much as possible.

Or, he could have hired an outside consultant for, say, a 6 month contract to do that work at substantial savings in salary and fringe benefits for county taxpayers. If you’re going to run government like a business, then run it like a business.

Something we also know from the business world is the cost of consultants can often exceed direct hires. Reasons are obvious. For the same qualifications, people will end up getting similar pay but consultants charge more to make up for, among other things, benefit costs. And if it’s a consulting firm, then there’s also their overhead and their cut of profits, both of which get added into price tag. It’s not unheard of for a consultant cost to be as much as double per day or sometimes even more. So your suggestion for 6 months of a consultant might cost about as much as my openness for trying this for a year as a direct hire - even though 6 months of work would be performed that way instead of 12.

I have biases too, but if Keane had won and wanted this then hopefully I’d be similarly objective and open minded. I strongly opposed Byron Brown’s election but I didn’t scream when he hired two deputy mayors when his predecessor had zero, and when last year he added a new high paying job title to help oversee the vacant house demolition project. Those things seem within reason to let the executive branch decide, and so does this - for now.

In next year’s budget, all it will take is 8 votes to delete this job if good enough results aren’t shown. Job deletions can’t be vetoed, only additions. I’m all for the legislature taking a close independent look at what the results are and deleting the job if it doesn’t create enough savings. Worth a try for a year, however.

If you’re going to run government like a business, then run it like a business. Not every “space utilization” idea has to come with a six-figure salary plus fringe. If a Democrat tried to pull that, people would be screaming bloody murder.

When it’s a focus group trying to rein in these out of control costs, it becomes “professionals” with six figure consulting fees on the government payroll.

Even if it works, maybe it isn’t something that will be needed forever but after many years of poor management and political appointees making decisions about how building use, it won’t surprise me at all if there’s a lot of inefficiency in this area.

Good to see Collins doing what he thinks is smart for long terms savings even if it’s something never done here before.