Going Negative...

Joel Giambra's recent control-board (v1.0 - Buffalo edition) rant about sales-tax sharing would be laughable if he didn't take himself so seriously.

His argument: that Erie County's projected deficits are much worse than Buffalo's so Erie County should be able to keep the full extra 1.75 cents on a dollar.

Erie County has been getting the benefit of 1 extra unshared percent since 1985, when Jimmy Griffin was too drunk, stupid, or incoherent to get a sharing agreement in writing (remember, this was the same year of the infamous "Stay home. Enjoy your family. Watch Channel 7, and get a six-pack" line).

Giambra's argument is analogous to a school-yard bully stealing Buffalo's lunch money for 20 years, using it to devour everything in sight, and then needing it to sustain its now immense hunger.

The lunch monitor (aka Albany -- no ever said lunch monitors were entirely on the up and up) eventually steps in and says the bully can't keep taking Buffalo's money. The bully's response? "I need it! I'm hungry, damn it!"

I'm not for throwing money at the Buffalo's problems, but maybe with continued fiscal discipline and the sales tax money that should rightfully flow to the city's coffers, the city could actually lower its property taxes (or eliminate its user fee) in a sustainable way. If this rightful sharing means that county property taxes go up, a county-wide increase would at least be more equitable (and more in line with the tax distributions in other upstate regions).

If Giambra has no sense of what belt tightening means, it should be no surprise. He seems to have whipped his off and thrown it out long ago. Buffalo has cut 21% of the city's jobs in the last 5 years. Erie County's head count under Giambra has continued to grow. Though cutting maybe 15% last year, it's back up by hundreds already this year.

When Joel brings his charts and graphs to the next control board meeting, I hope he remembers to bring the ones that show how much he has increased debt, wasted future assets, and thrown away tax revenue. Now that's going negative.