Shorter Control Board Nonsense
1. Chris Collins submitted a wild-ass guess as to what the county’s revenues and expenditures will be over the next four years.
2. The appointed, unchecked county control board has its own wild-ass guesses as to the next four years’ county finances.
3. The control board rejected Collins’ four-year plan. No soup for you.
4. The law creating the control board suggests that the control board ought to now bring up a counterproposal representing its own wild-ass guess.
5. The control board will do no such thing, remaining perfectly happy to pick hypothetical nits and come up with unique ways to say “no”.
6. We need Governor David Paterson to grow a pair on this issue and reconstitute the board with people who are less political and more professional. Ever hear much controversy coming from the Buffalo control board? No, because the political agenda is not there.
Richard Says:May 18th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I have to disagree with the statement that the Buffalo Control Board does not have a political agenda. I do not know how you define political but they seem to have as unrealistic financial or political point of view. As a resident of Buffalo, who is not a financial expert, I think that I can say with certainty that Buffalo will never be self sufficient on its tax revenues for its budget expenditures. If I start with that premise then I find that the BFSA stated goal that the city must learn to live within its means, to be an exercise futility. It would be better if the BFSA asked is the way in which the city is providing services being done efficiently? In most businesses that is accomplished by doing comparables. The control board would have to begin to work to understand how our politicians and unions provide the services. It would mean that the board would have to begin a process of looking for best practices in other cities. It really means that the staff members and board members would have to do some intellectual work. The control board has chosen during its tenure to take the easy road of only concentrating on looking at the dollars. We are in a city that is continuing to lose population but we have a Mayor and Common Council who see the surplus funds in the bank as a chance to hire employees.