NORTH TONAWANDA — This story helped get George O’Neil fired before we even printed it.

O’Neil, the executive director of the United Way of the Tonawandas and an opponent of the agency’s proposed consolidation with two other Niagara County United Ways, was dismissed Wednesday night in a 7-6 vote of the agency’s executive board.

One of the reasons, according to O’Neil and Gary J. Franklin, the board vice president, was his anti-merger comments in an interview he gave The Buffalo News Nov. 13.

Franklin learned of the comments from Robert Hagen, who is to be chairman of the board of the new United Way of Greater Niagara, as the combination of the Lockport and Niagara Falls United Ways is to be known.

The News relayed some of O’Neil’s comments to Hagen to get his response for an article that was supposed to run in this space on the future of the United Way of the Tonawandas as it prepares to go it alone in the wake of the merger’s rejection by members in that community Oct. 29.

“We did ask George not to issue statements against board policy,” said Franklin, who, supports the merger. “We did vote to approve the merger twice. We did vote to put it before the community twice.”

Hagen admitted relaying his displeasure at some of O’Neil’s views to a Tonawandas board member. O’Neil and Robert Sondel, the board president, said Franklin was the recipient.

But O’Neil, 71, a 22-year veteran of the agency, said he thinks the root cause of his ouster was a serious philosophical dispute over the role of a United Way.

In the original interview, O’Neil said he thought the United Way of Greater Niagara would be more about “moving money around” than helping people.

Hagen said Thursday, “I told a member of the board of the United Way of the Tonawandas that we didn’t appreciate that he said we just move money around. We are in the business of raising money and giving it to [nonprofit] agencies. We don’t move money around.”

O’Neil said Nov. 13, “They’re going to champion themselves as a fundraising organization. Here in the Tonawandas, we talk to people directly. We’re old school.”

After his dismissal, O’Neil said Hagen’s comments merely prove his point.

“We provided a direct service information program and an outreach program. They didn’t want to do it,” O’Neil said. “The new United Way is a United Way without a heart. They don’t care about the little person on the street.”

“I don’t think George is a uniting force,” Franklin said. “I think he’s a dividing force.”

Hagen acknowledged that if the three-way merger had gone through, there would no longer have been a full-time United Way office in the Twin Cities.

Hagen said that office, now located on Seymour Street in the City of Tonawanda, would have been closed and replaced by a part-time satellite office.

Hagen, who is chairman of the board of the Lockport-based Eastern Niagara United Way, will be the No. 2 person in the new United Way of Greater Niagara. Carol G. Houwaart-Diez, president of the Niagara Fallsbased United Way of Niagara, will be president of the consolidated organization.

It will be headquartered, at least for now, in the United Way of Niagara’s current offices on Military Road in the Town of Niagara, where the lease has three years to run, Houwaart- Diez said.

Sondel, the Tonawandas board president and North Tonawanda’s deputy city attorney, is among the majority on the board of his United Way who also supports a merger. He said last week that his group’s bylaws require 100 people to constitute a quorum at a full membership meeting — and he’s never seen a gathering anywhere near that size.

That being the case, signed proxy votes are usually used on full membership issues. The Tonawandas rules say anyone who contributes to the United Way financially or as a volunteer is a member and can vote.

Sondel said Franklin, the North Tonawanda public works superintendent, often gathers proxies for United Way votes. “His employees are the biggest donors in the city,” Sondel said.

At the first public vote in February, the merger was approved, allegedly with the help of pro-merger proxies recruited by getting donors to give as little as $1 to the United Way.

However, a revote was ordered. O’Neil submitted the question to the state attorney general’s office, which ruled there needed to be a do-over because the original merger language didn’t specify that anyone who is a member of one of the old United Ways automatically becomes a member of the merged agency.

Sondel and Franklin accused O’Neil of drumming up anti-merger proxy votes for the Oct. 29 revote. “We directed George not to work against us. I don’t have any proof, but I think he was,” Sondel said.

O’Neil wouldn’t say directly if he solicited anti-merger proxies, but he said the opponents all came to him for proxy forms.

“I didn’t knock it. They have a right to vote,” he said.

Some of those casting votes against the merger were rounded up by United Way member agencies, O’Neil said. Others were employees of local businesses.

The revote result was 329 against the merger, 116 in favor. The proxies went 301-95 against it and those who showed up in person voted 28-21 against it.

Ironically, O’Neil originally was a proponent of merging the United Way of the Tonawandas into a larger entity. Sondel said, “He was the one who got me fired up about it.”

O’Neil said he tried to line up a four-way merger about 10 years ago, with the Lockport, Niagara Falls and Tonawandas organizations joining up with the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County.

After that fell through, O’Neil made an effort to merge the Tonawandas agency with the Buffalo agency. Eventually, Sondel said, the Tonawandas backed off because of a feared loss of autonomy.

Houwaart-Diez said everyone working at the three United Ways serving Niagara County would have had a job, but not necessarily the same one they have now, and that went for O’Neil, too.

Sondel said there won’t be any effort to merge the Tonawandas United Way into any other group in the short-term, but the issue might be reopened “down the road,” after a new executive director is hired.

Michael Weiner, the new president of the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County, said he’d like to see that. Weiner said he’s already talked to Houwaart- Diez.

“Carol and I have had some very, very preliminary conversations, but I wouldn’t call it consolidation. That’s a bad place to start the conversation, because it scares people off,” Weiner said.

But he pointed to the United Way of Greater Rochester as a model that could be emulated. That agency handles all financial management, but there are individual fundraising campaigns by smaller United Ways in the Rochester region.

“Every United Way does things a little differently,” Weiner said. “I wouldn’t be blind to other things or other models.”

For O’Neil, he feels that the model the United Way of the Tonawandas followed is the most responsive to the needs of the recipients of the charity.

“I feel sorry for the needy in this community,” he said.

Meanwhile, the United Way of the Tonawandas, as of Thursday, had raised only 52 percent of this year’s $375,000 goal, with an open-ended donation completion date.

Sondel said he thinks the battles over the merger might have played a role in the results. “I’m hoping it doesn’t,” he said, “but it might have some influence.”