Legislature picks staff to serve leadership
Chairwoman makes hiring decisions
Published: January 12, 2010, 12:30 am
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Heads rolled a week ago with the Erie County Legislature’s regime change. Now, the first new staff hires are moving in to replace the suddenly unemployed.
Legislature aides are appointed without civil service protection, so job security rides on connections and the political winds.
Sandra J. Rosenswie, Erie County’s Independence Party chairwoman, has taken a full-time job as an administrative clerk serving the Legislature, at a salary of around $39,000 a year.
Rosenswie is a friend of new Legislator Christina Wleklinski- Bove, a West Seneca Democrat and former Town Board member who weeks ago agreed to support Barbara Miller-Williams in her bid to become the Legislature’s new chairwoman.
A bipartisan majority of lawmakers last week elected Miller- Williams to the Legislature’s most powerful post, denying Lynn M. Marinelli a fifth year presiding over the 15-member chamber.
Under current rules, the chairwoman hires and fires the Legislature staff.
Wleklinski-Bove said she had no input into Rosenswie’s hiring. Remember, Wleklinski-Bove added, the county Independence Party did not endorse her when she ran for the Legislature last year.
Rosenswie has worked for the Legislature before, most recently as a district-office aide to then- Legislator Cynthia Locklear, also a West Seneca Democrat. Locklear served for one term, 2006-08.
Rosenswie said the new chairwoman asked her to take one of the Legislature’s jobs downtown.
“Barbara asked me to go to work for her on the central staff, and I said I would,” Rosenswie said Monday. “I have a great rapport with both sides of the aisle, and so maybe I can help. There is a lot of work to do.”
Sheila Meegan, a West Seneca councilwoman, will take a part-time job with the Legislature, working one day a week for about $17 an hour, officials said.
Among Meegan’s connections is G. Steven Pigeon, the well-known political agitator who played a supporting role in paving Miller-Williams’ path to Legislature chairwoman.
Meegan’s father is Christopher P. Walsh, a former West Seneca Democratic Party chairman whom Pigeon has called his “second father.” Pigeon also controls a political fund that produced campaign materials to benefit Meegan when she ran for Town Board in 2007.
Meegan could not be reached Monday to comment.
An unusual coalition elevated Miller-Williams: six Republican legislators generally loyal to County Executive Chris Collins, and two Democrats, Wleklinski- Bove and Timothy M. Kennedy of Buffalo. The two Democrats teamed with Miller-Williams and the Republicans over the objections of Democratic Party headquarters.
Calling themselves the “reform coalition,” the bloc of nine approved a series of budget changes that allow Miller-Williams, D-Buffalo, to rearrange the staff.
The budget changes also left the six Democrats who supported Marinelli at a disadvantage when it comes to staff resources: They have fewer aides to prepare the resolutions or bills that advance their initiatives, said Legislator Daniel M. Kozub, D-Hamburg, one of the six.
The Miller-Williams bloc created jobs for two chiefs of staff. One will be paid about $68,000 a year to supervise staff on the Republican side of the aisle. He will be Bryan Fiume, who had been Collins’ liaison to the Legislature.
The other will be paid $75,000 to supervise staff on Miller-Williams’ side of the aisle. He will be John C. Davis, formerly an assistant to Marinelli.
Miller-Williams also hired Rebecca Brooks, once her district- office aide and campaign treasurer, as a $34,000-a-year junior administrative assistant; and Diana K. Cihak, an organizer with Citizen Action of New York who also served as an organizer for the Barack Obama presidential campaign in Western New York, as a $50,000-a-year administrative assistant.
mspina@buffnews.com
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