Published: November 22, 2009 07:53 pm      

SCHEER: Reasons to go on vacation

A half dozen or so people asked me what I did on my vacation last week.

I didn’t go on vacation, I simply took a break from writing the notebook.

It was one of those mental health kind of things. I just needed it.

I spent the weekend before last hanging out with my family. We went bowling. We rented movies, including the rather amazing Pixar movie, “Up,” which I would recommend to anyone who may find themselves questioning what’s most important in life. I didn’t pick up a single newspaper. I avoided nightly television newscasts. I put myself in a tightly sealed vacuum of personal comfort and joy. It was awesome.

There’s never a shortage of things to write about when it comes to politics and government in Niagara County and New York state.

But, having learned what I’ve learned about both over the years, I sometimes get to the point where I just don’t know what to say anymore.

Here are a few examples of the kind of things that make you shake your head and want to crawl away and hide in your house for awhile:

• Patricia Stackrow, the ex-secretary to former state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, admitted under oath in court last week that she handled Bruno’s personal affairs on state time and, when he wasn’t looking, stole money from his personal account. There’s so many problem areas here. Stackrow took public money to do private business for a state official. She retired last year from a job that paid her in excess of $100,000 per year. How many private sector businesses in New York pay their top office assistants on par with what they’d pay the CEO? For the record, Stackrow, who testified under the condition of immunity from prosecution, told the court that she took money from Bruno as retaliation for the demeaning manner in which he treated her while at work, a claim Bruno later denied.

• Niagara County Industrial Development Agency Chairman Henry Sloma took time out of a meeting of the agency’s board of directors last week to explain various reasons why the City of Niagara Falls is such a dump and why it needs all the help it can get from the county’s IDA. The presentation was intended for Mayor Paul Dyster and members of his administration who didn’t show, evidently because they didn’t know when Sloma invited them that they should be there at that time, on that day, for that meeting.

On the surface, this all looks like another one of those classic turf wars we’ve come to know and love in Niagara County and, in some respects, it is. Don’t lose sight of the fact that Sloma is a long-time ally of state Sen. George Maziarz, who is himself no fan of Dyster or state Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte and isn’t shy when it comes to voicing his disdain for the city as a whole. Also remember that a few weeks ago, Sloma told reporters Niagara Falls didn’t need economic development, it needed FEMA, a shot that, for obvious reasons, didn’t sit well with the city’s mayor.

All of this illustrates a larger and unfortunate point: Everyone talks a good game but if we are being honest about the true nature of the decision-making process in Niagara County we can be safe in saying that much of it revolves around politics, personalities and the egos involved. I’ve observed it now for 10 years and it’s a shame.

Niagara County has an IDA and a separate economic development department. The city has its own development team and staff. The state has similar people working at a main office in Buffalo and a satellite station in downtown Niagara Falls known as USA Niagara Development Corp. Go to Lockport and other towns and villages in the area and you’ll find promotions and development people there too.

And yet, more often than not, they don’t coordinate with one another, don’t communicate with one another on projects and, in some cases, don’t even like each other very much because they don’t represent the same political party.

The county posted an 8.6 percent unemployment rate last month. It would seem there’s much work to be done by all parties involved.

• Incoming Town of Lewiston Supervisor Steve Reiter has been offered the chance to accept a lower salary next year. The offer was extended by outgoing Supervisor Fred Newlin, who took plenty of heat during the election campaign for giving himself a 37 percent raise in pay for doing the town’s top job. Now, Reiter wasn’t exactly out front when it came to the pay issue in the weeks leading up to election day. The job of hammering away at Newlin’s raise fell to Lockport GOP Chairman Rob Nichols, his vice chairman Thomas Deal and third supervisor candidate Kathryn Mazierski. All three spent considerable time telling voters Newlin had to go for being so piggish when it came to his own supervisor salary. And now, it appears as though Reiter will decline the offer to return the extra 37 percent when he takes office. It would seem like Nichols, Deal and Mazierski should be up in arms about this, after all it looks like the taxpayers will pay Reiter what the same amount they said Newlin didn’t deserve and shouldn’t have taken.

On second thought, maybe I could use a vacation.