A global waste industry giant with facilities in Western New York, including Niagara County, dishes out campaign donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle across the Empire State.

Houston-based Waste Management and its subsidiaries have given more than $300,000 to state candidates and committees since 1999, and more than $200,000 to county and local committees and candidates across New York since 2006, a Buffalo News analysis of state campaign finance data has found.

Some of the biggest recipients statewide include the state Republican Committee, the state Senate GOP Committee and the former campaign committees of Govs. Eliot A. Spitzer and David A. Paterson, according to data from the state Board of Elections.

Waste Management, which wants the state’s permission to expand operations at CWM Chemical Services, its Town of Porter hazardous waste landfill, has faced some difficulty in obtaining approval from environmental regulators.

CWM on Balmer Road applied for an expansion permit in 2003, though the state Department of Environmental Conservation has yet to deem the proposal complete.

Last year, the company donated nearly $45,000 to candidates and committees across New York.

Shelling out cash to elected officials is part of the system, and there are differing opinions on why companies donate, said James A. Gardner, vice dean for academic affairs at the University at Buffalo Law School.

In the conventional view, corporations contribute in order to support candidates they like, as well as, to some extent, to gain access to officials, said Gardner, who also heads the Jaeckle Center for Law and Democracy.

“The more you donate,” Gardner said, “presumably the greater the gratitude of the candidate and the greater access that you have.”

Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said groups and businesses donate because “they either want to get something or they don’t want anything to happen to them.”

“It’s a pay-to-play culture,” Horner said. “We’re talking about the titans of American capitalism — they don’t just give money away because they’re feeling charitable. They must think it works, or they wouldn’t keep doing it.”

Locally, the Niagara County GOP, Erie County Executive Chris Collins and the town Republican committees in Porter and Sardinia were among the top area recipients.

Waste Management, which has 30 facilities statewide, also operates a solid waste landfill in the Town of Sardinia, in southeast Erie County.

The company has four landfills in the state, including CWM in Porter, said spokeswoman Lori Caso. The other three landfills accept solid waste.

In addition, there are nine hauling operations, 10 transfer stations, two waste-to-energy plants and five plants that separate recyclables, including one in Depew, owned by Waste Management in the state.

All of the donations made by New Hampshire-based Wheelabrator Technologies came after it became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Waste Management in 1998.

“Through our recycling facilities, hauling operations, waste-to- energy plants and landfills,” Caso said in a written statement, “we are stakeholders in all of these communities and are the environmental solution in many issues that impact New Yorkers.”

When asked what the company hopes to gain by donating, Caso referred to her written statment.

The costs of campaigning and running for election on the state and local level are less than what it takes on the federal level. The upcoming midterm elections for Congress this year will cost campaign donors $3.7 billion, according to a study released by the Center for Responsive Politics, which runs the Web site,

opensecrets.org

. On the state level, the proposal to expand landfilling in Porter faced a serious challenge in 2006 and 2007.

In those two years, both houses of the State Legislature passed a measure that would prevent hazardous waste landfills from being built in the Great Lakes Basin, unless proponents could prove the facilities would not discharge pollutants into the waterways. Opponents of CWM’s expansion said the bill would create a serious obstacle.

Then-Gov. George E. Pataki, who received a total of $5,000 in campaign donations in 2002 and 2004 from Waste Management companies, vetoed the measure in 2006.

Spitzer vetoed the bill in 2007. His campaign committee took $32,000 from Waste Management in 2005 and 2006.

The Town of Porter Republican Committee has received four $500 donations from CWM since January 2007, according to state data.

The committee has never asked for a donation from the company, committee Chairman John “Duffy” Johnston said.

The committee does not tell its candidates what views to take based on what donations are received, Johnston said.

“I don’t know how much of a political issue that is,” he said. “As far as anybody that donates money, we’re willing to take it.”

County Republicans have received $18,900 from CWM and its parent company since July 2007. Chairman Michael J. Norris could not be reached to comment.

State Sen. George D. Maziarz, R-Newfane, considered the most powerful Republican in the county, received $500 directly from CWM in February 2001. But the GOP in Niagara and Monroe counties, two places where Maziarz’s senate district sits, has accepted more than $100,000 from the company since November 2005.

Additionally, State Senate Republicans and the state GOP Committee have received more than $100,000 from Waste Management and Waste Management- owned companies since 1999.

Maziarz said he returned the 2001 donation, and added his campaign does not receive support from either the county or state committees. Asked about what effect, if any, campaign donations have on his decision-making, he said: “It doesn’t influence me whatsoever.”

Despite Waste Management’s “deep pockets” — the company reported $11.8 billion in revenues last year — nearly all local governments in Niagara County stand with Residents for Responsible Government, a Porter-based residents group, in opposition to the expansion of landfilling at CWM, the organization’s leader said.

The volunteer group is supported by donations, and its members are passionate about the cause, newly elected RRG President Wendy Swearingen said. “If we had millions of dollars to grease the wheels,” Swearingen said, “this would not even be an issue.”

RRG's Wendy Swearingen on Waste Management's political contributions

Aside from supporting favored candidates and obtaining access, there is another view of why corporations donate, and it amounts to somewhat of a “shakedown,” according to Gardner, of UB’s Law School.

Since corporations have money, some corporate officers say they’re viewed as a “piggy bank” and politicians “hit them up for donations,” Gardner said. The implication is “if they don’t cough up some money,” he said, “that maybe their interests won’t get the kind of careful consideration that they otherwise might.”

Lewiston resident Amy Witryol, who has researched hazardous waste issues in the Lewiston and Porter areas for several years, said state campaign finance disclosure laws have loopholes which don’t require the source of some donations to be reported. Despite Waste Management’s resources, Witryol said she believes the landfill operations at the Balmer Road facility are on track to close in about four years if the company doesn’t receive the state’s permission to expand.

“They are out of room,” she said in an e-mail, “and after eight years of trying [just to complete their application, they] haven’t come close to jumping even the first of four difficult hoops they have to navigate through.”