EDITORIALS
Government of the people . . .
Cuomo’s proposal could help voters shape the local power structure
As New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo is not out to tell any of the state’s 10,000-plus local government entities that they have to merge, dissolve or otherwise change the way they operate. But he also doesn’t want to be the one who has to tell people they can’t make such changes to their own governments if they want to.
That’s why Cuomo is out with a proposal to replace the many state laws that control such things with one reform law that would remove many barriers to more efficient local government. It is a good idea that could save the taxpayers millions, just when such restructuring is sorely needed.
The attorney general’s office has, from time to time, been called upon to investigate rumors of misbehavior in some of the state’s public bodies. Some of them were so under the radar that, until some kind of pension or other wrongdoing was found there, even their own constituents didn’t know the body existed, levying taxes and spending money.
Even if everything they do is legal and ethical, the proliferation of such overlapping agencies cannot help but add up to higher tax bills than would otherwise be necessary. With 939 such bodies in Erie County alone, there is no case to be made that all of them are necessary or even all that useful.
That experience led Cuomo to last week’s announcement, a proposal for a law that would empower citizens or, in many cases, the government entities themselves to formally share some responsibilities with other governments, to merge with nearby or surrounding entities, or to just go away.
Current law does not, technically, forbid such actions. But it erects such high barriers to reform — confusing rules, onerous petition-gathering requirements and too much power in the hands of entrenched officials — that reform-minded citizens are virtually powerless to drive change. The result is layer upon layer of villages, towns and numerous districts that provide sewer, water, road, power and public safety services. And collect the taxes to pay for them.
The status quo includes no inclination toward change, as Cuomo notes, because the various units of government provide so much pay, prestige and patronage. Those who do not directly benefit from the continued existence of any government body are either unaware of its existence or have reason to believe that there is nothing they can do about it.
Those who draw a paycheck — or, often more important, health insurance or a pension — from such agencies will, of course, argue that the small agencies are the purest example of grass-roots democracy. But that’s only true if the people have, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, the right “to alter or to abolish” each and every entity.
Cuomo’s proposal would not empower the attorney general or any other state official to swoop in from Albany and decree that this or that level of government needs to go. It would only allow the people and, in some cases, an agency’s own governing board to merge with other such boards or to transfer assets to another governing authority and shrink, meld or dissolve.
The only argument the Legislature would have for failure to carry out Cuomo’s suggestion, supported as it is by Gov. David A. Paterson, would be to put the interests of small-town bosses ahead of the interests of the state’s many overburdened and underserved taxpayers.
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