Well here’s another shocker in Western New York. The residents of the Villages of Williamsville and Sloan both voted by about a 5 to 1 margin to keep their villages in existence. They are willing to pay the relatively small amount of extra taxes necessary to maintain the level of services they receive by virtue of living in their village.

These people value their local governments! What Kevin Gaughan has managed to do is just to get enough village residents to force the local governments to waste the taxpayers’ money holding these referendums. He was aided in this by the fact that our totally dysfunctional state Legislature passed a law allowing this kind of vote to be forced on localities with a ridiculously low percentage (I think it’s 10 percent) of residents’ signatures.

I have great faith in the fallibility of human nature and believe that one could probably get 10 percent of residents to sign virtually any petition, especially one that purports to make changes which would save tax money in this state.

My thoughts on Gaughan, for what they’re worth, is that whatever town or city he lives in, he has every right to try to change the configuration of that local government. Since I assume he is an Erie County resident, work on that government also, and Lord knows we could use even his help in changing our state government.

But any local government where he does not live is absolutely none of his business, and he should stop trying to stroke his ego and leave them alone.

Cheektowaga