After 29 months as Erie County executive, Chris Collins has somehow dispensed with nearly

all rivals to power. He's buzzing along on his conservative course, blissfully unfazed by

outside complaints.

"Yeah, it's been noisy," Collins said recently. "It's been ugly in a couple cases. But I

think to some extent I have always said, "promises made, promises kept.'"

He's not one to change course for concepts like "checks and balances" or "legislative

purview."

"Chris Collins gets everything he wants," an adversary formerly in the path of the Collins

steamroller once said.

Largely through power politics — and less through the strength of his ideas —

Collins has changed the County Legislature, the county Industrial Development Agency and the

Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Meanwhile, the state-appointed control board went soft. Collins signed a complex agreement

that charts out Erie County Medical Center's future financial support. He signed pacts with

the public-employee unions that view him unfavorably. Two unions ratified their proposed

contracts. Two did not.

He's cozy now with the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership, the influential business group that

once treated him as an outsider despite his business background. After putting up a fight,

he's negotiating an end to the U.S. Justice Department lawsuit against Erie County and its

jails, making that litigation less likely to spoil his election year.

Speaking of elections, his main campaign fund will contain about $1.2 million when midyear

reports are filed around July 15. That will be a full year before Collins will begin

campaigning in earnest for re-election.

Brian J. Lipke, the Gibraltar Industries chairman and chief executive who also headed the

Buffalo control board, has known Collins for years and urged him to run for county executive.

"Chris has a very high set of expectations, as he did when he was in the private sector,"

said Lipke, a donor and steadfast friend to the Collins team. "Sometimes you bump into

obstacles because your expectations are so high. He has never been one to back away."

Of course, there's a flip side to Collins' strength.

Is it a democracy when the chief executive rules by fiat?

Dozens of cultural providers — theaters, galleries, museums — will not receive

their full Legislature-approved outlays this year and might never receive them because Collins

figures the county cannot yet afford the extra $1.7 million the Legislature voted to

distribute.

Some legal minds think Collins would lose in court, especially since he made exceptions for

recipients connected to his political friends. None of the have-not agencies has sued, nor has

the Legislature, but after a stormy week last week, Democratic lawmakers are pondering a

lawsuit.

Yes, county government ended 2009 with an almost $44 million surplus, but Collins will

spend none of it making the array of cultural agencies whole, nor will he restore child care

subsidies for the 700 working-poor families in Erie County who lost them largely because of

reductions in state aid. Also, he intends to spend just half of the $400,000 the Legislature

appropriated for this year's summer youth programs.

As for that $44 million surplus, around $41 million can be traced to stimulus dollars the

federal government gave to counties that pay part of their Medicaid programs. Collins wants to

hold as much as he can for future needs — irritating legislators and policy makers who

believe more of the stimulus money should be spent stimulating the economy. After all, Collins

declared economic development his top priority last year.

"What the county lacks is not reserves but rather sustained economic growth," Rep. Louise

M. Slaughter wrote in a letter almost scolding Collins for not releasing the money into the

local economy. "The City of Buffalo is the third most impoverished city in the nation, and

earlier this year the local jobless rate hit its highest levels since the mid-1980s,

underscoring the need to use this surplus to create jobs now."

Collins sent back a response: "While I understand that many in Congress, Albany and the

Erie County Legislature have never met a tax they cannot raise or a dollar they cannot spend,

those of us who have worked in the private sector understand the value of a dollar and how any

increase in taxes kills future job growth."

Meanwhile, Collins wants to shrink county government further by casting off nonmandated

county services to the nonprofit agencies willing to administer them. Which also means

nonprofit agencies free of County Legislature oversight.

"I think he's doing what he was elected to do. I sense that most people are pretty

happy with that," said Legislator Kevin Hardwick of the City of Tonawanda, the Canisius

College political science professor who hosted a local radio show about politics before he ran

for the Legislature as a Republican last year.

"I think, certainly, the county is fiscally in better shape," Hardwick said. "When we try

to undo some of the fiscal gimmicks that were employed in the waning days of the last

administration, he's cleaning up the mess."

Other county executives have tried to bend the Legislature to their wills and reshape

county government's assorted players, like the Industrial Development Agency. But even by

building their power, can a county executive really change the way of life in Erie County?

While styles of leadership vary among county executives, they don't have a huge impact on

the quality of life here, said Michael Haselswerdt, also a political science professor at

Canisius College.

"I think that the problems of Western New York are bigger than any county-level government

can deal with," Haselswerdt said. "We are reliant on whatever happens at the state level and

the federal level. The loss of jobs is more of a systemic issue rather than a local issue that

we can do too much about."

Collins, in a recent interview, had to be reminded that thousands of people out there

dislike his policies. They are not just County Legislature Democrats and their friends. A

collection of five women's groups in March said they are pretty much sick of his decisions

that "damage the well-being and health of women and children."

Collins has largely forgotten about all that because he has moved on.

"The decisions are made," he said. "We are not revisiting them. They were the right

decisions based on our vision and our core values. That bus left the station. I let people

picket me, chirp at me, editorialize against me, write letters about me. It doesn't matter."

He picked up speed, moving into speech-making mode.

"Our vision is to make this a world-class community where people want to live, work and

play, which means reducing the cost of government," he said. "I believe in small government,

personal accountability and service to taxpayers. Which means, I am not going to raise taxes."

In any small gathering that includes Collins, he does virtually all the talking. So the two

aides sitting with him rarely joined the conversation, unlike the way aides to former County

Executive Joel A. Giambra threw themselves into the chatter when Giambra was interviewed.

Grant Loomis and Christopher M. Grant were with Collins at the start of his campaign, when

he would speak to clusters of conservative-minded voters in their parlors. As much as any duo,

the two have framed Collins' message and run his interference.

Loomis pens the statements that upbraid Collins' critics, usually Comptroller Mark C.

Poloncarz or whatever Legislature Democrat is in their cross hairs.

Grant, who has yet to turn 30, plays for Collins the same roles that Deputy Mayor Steve

Casey plays for Mayor Byron W. Brown — protector, problem-solver, enforcer.

Grant enlisted Dennis Vacco, the former U.S. attorney and state attorney general now in

private practice, to provide more gravitas to the county negotiating team that faced the

Justice Department. And Grant was probably the largest single architect of the Legislature

transition.

The Collins cadre last year engineered election defeats for two of his most-disliked

lawmakers, clipping off the Democrats' vetoproof majority and rendering the Legislature more

irrelevant in Collins' eyes. The Republican bloc then partnered with three legislators from a

Democratic faction to oust the Collins-despised Lynn M. Marinelli from the top post and

install Legislator Barbara Miller-Williams, D-Buffalo, as chairwoman.

At one time, Collins and the pro-business Buffalo-Niagara Partnership were cool to each

other — odd since Collins vowed to "run government like a business" and implemented

years-old Partnership suggestions to jettison certain county services.

But Collins forged a friendship with Partnership Chairman Jonathan A. Dandes rather than

Chief Executive Officer Andrew Rudnick. Now Collins and the Partnership's leaders seem to get

along swell.

After his compromise with the the state-appointed control board, the agency softened.

Collins granted the control board's wish to take out a long-term loan on the county's behalf.

While Collins long swore he would never do it, he figured state leaders were unlikely to

dismantle the Fiscal Stability Authority before the bonds expire in 2023.

Simultaneously, the control board accepted his four-year financial plan and eased into

"advisory status." Everyone involved will say this was no quid pro quo. Control board Chairman

Daniel C. Oliverio effusively praised Collins' leadership, and the Fiscal Stability Authority

has not created a problem for him since.

In well-known power plays, Collins took control of the county Industrial Development Agency

and installed new leadership at the Buffalo-Niagara Convention and Visitors Bureau, the latter

of which he starved of county dollars until its leaders complied.

It's not as though no one has taken him on. The Civil Service Employees Association

challenged his decision to steer many new hires into part-time status, when they get half the

paid time off as full-timer. The CSEA has won before the state Public Employment Relations

Board. The Legislature sued him over the 2009 budget and kept the tax rate lower than Collins

preferred.

Poloncarz, for a report on the county Ethics Board, took the Collins team to court to get

them to turn over the personal financial disclosure forms that dozens of county officials must

file each year. Poloncarz is often rumored as a Democratic opponent for Collins next year.

They don't get along.

"He's had successes. He has had failures," Poloncarz said of Collins. "I think he would have

more successes if he weren't so bullying. Government is compromise. And usually you get things

accomplished when you have compromises."