EDITORIALS
Control shifts to Collins
Fiscal Stability Board sees right time to revert to ‘soft’ advisory status
And so it ends, not with a period but with a question mark. Can Erie County responsibly conduct the public’s business without the firm hand of a state control board on the wheel? We’re about to find out.
Given that the county has almost never conducted the public’s business responsibly in recent history, there’s no sure answer. Still, the moment is right for trying, as matters both of law and timing.
Apprehensions notwithstanding, this is a good moment for the control board to back off. There will never be a perfect time in economically weak Western New York to take off the financial training wheels. The federal government is giving the county’s elected officials a solid, if temporary, plat-form from which to plan for the challenges to come.
The original hope (against hope) was that the control board would remain “hard,” with final authority over contracts and budgets, until county government unquestionably was running smoothly, its financial and political pistons operating in something like synchronicity. But that’s not what happened. The federal stimulus happened.
With Washington raining dollars down on Erie County, it was a comparatively easy thing to craft a more-or-less solid four-year financial plan. Control board officials say that, with the influx of federal stimulus funds, the first two years of the plan look strong, while the final two could produce a deficit of $58 million.
The administration of County Executive Chris Collins acknowledged that fact and responded—presto!—with a range of cost-cutting and revenue-raising options that would close that gap. The question is whether the county executive and County Legislature can really agree on difficult decisions like consolidating libraries, increasing fees and hiking taxes, if those steps indeed are needed two or more years down the road. Doubters abound.
Regardless of the source of the new revenue, though, the county has now produced a four-year financial plan that the control board acknowledges as legitimate. With that, the board legally is required to revert to advisory status. Hence, Tuesday’s vote to do just that. Collins and the Legislature have now regained all the governmental authority traditionally accorded to county governments in New York.
Which is not to say the control board—which did a good job and saved the county millions—has gone away. As a “soft” board, it will continue to review and monitor county finances. If the budget goes out of balance, it will become a hard board again. That’s the steam vent in this process.
Some control board members are concerned that unions and government officials will continue to press Gov. David A. Paterson and the State Legislature to abolish the control board entirely. That would be foolish, given the board’s ability to borrow more cheaply on behalf of taxpayers. Beyond that, the only reason to abolish the board is to be sure it can’t come back as a hard control board. But by law, it can only do so if that kind of oversight has proven necessary. Even in Albany, why would anyone foreclose on that possibility?
So, call us ambivalent. The county was never in the deep financial hole that Buffalo was. Its problem was political. It couldn’t get out of its own way to balance its budget. Things could once again become grim.
Legislators don’t always have to agree with each other or with the county executive, but what they and the county executive do always have to do is serve the public interest and, when necessary, pursue reasonable compromises. We’ll soon see if they’re up to that.
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