FOCUS: COUNTY GOVERNMENT
Collins is a master of the political chokehold
Chris Collins understands the power of money — especially when he threatens to take it away. “I’m not naive to the strength I have,” the Erie County executive said recently when interviewed about his negotiating style.
“I do play hardball. I will never apologize for that,” he said. “I go into negotiations with the endgame in mind. I know my strength. I know my opponent’s strengths. I know where I want to get to. I want it to be a win-win.”
The county executive says he has been negotiating all his life, first in business and now in government. Lately he has employed an unusual method to effect change at outside agencies dependent on county dollars: He cuts off their money until he’s satisfied with their management or his influence over them.
• He twice deprived the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau of crucial county dollars until he could appoint more members to its governing board and redirect the management team, forcing the resignation of Richard S. Geiger, the chief executive who Collins thought was underperforming.
• Collins threatened to also starve the cultural agencies receiving the most county dollars until they let him appoint members to their governing boards. Most eventually did so without voicing a public complaint.
• His Cultural Resources Advisory Board will reach deeper into the inner workings of the county’s museums, galleries and performance halls by telling them to provide more financial reports and to defend their management strategies in order to collect county grants in 2010.
When the County Legislature objected— because it authorizes money for the groups without new strings attached — Collins and his aides responded by citing the powers given the executive branch.
They say they are protecting the taxpayers and their investments in outside agencies, about $5 million a year to the culturals and $9 million this year to the Convention & Visitors Bureau and the convention center for major upgrades.
Other county executives have been accused of a “my way or the highway” style. But Collins has become the rare Erie County CEO willing to withhold county dollars to nonprofit agencies as a negotiating tactic.
“I would say yes, it is unusual,” said former Legislature Chairman Charles M. Swanick, a retired legislator who was in office when Edward J. Rutkowski, Dennis T. Gorski and Joel A. Giambra arrived in the county executive’s suite. All were flush with power from their election victories, Swanick said, and were accused of “my way or the highway” governing.
“I think it’s a big mistake when anyone — the Legislature or the executive branch — puts restrictions on funding — changing board members, seeking board seats, forcing their directors to resign,” Swanick said. “There are other ways you can accomplish what you want rather than through a power grab.”
Said Collins: “I was elected to be the CEO of Erie County. The executive branch of government does the work. . . . The CEO’s role is to run that organization.”
Collins and his team credit some of their biggest accomplishments on the Collins negotiating style: He sets the goal and expects commissioners to meet it.
“Chris has a fierce sense of urgency and wants to get things done as quickly as possible,” said Christopher M. Grant, the Collins chief of staff who has been the point man on some of the negotiations, including this year’s go-round with the Convention & Visitors Bureau. “One of the things we saw in the county executive’s race is we had 50 years of career politicians holding things back. He feels as though he needs to get things done now.”
In the summer of 2008, Collins told City Hall that he was dumping, in one year, the contract through which county crews maintain City of Buffalo parks because the city wasn’t paying enough. Talks toward a new contract waxed and waned over most of the year until city leaders, facing a June 13 deadline and the onset of summer, agreed to pay almost four times what they would have paid for county maintenance in the latter half of 2009.
Even without money as a carrot, he draws a hard line. Collins refused to let the state-appointed financial control board take out a long-term loan on the government’s behalf, but with his limited leverage, he produced a stalemate. One argument with the control board’s usually cordial chairman, Robert M. Glaser, grew so heated that the men talked about stepping outside.
Finally, with little money to pay for the summer’s improvement projects, Collins agreed to let the board secure a one-year loan, and the board approved Collins’ four-year financial plan — the first four-year plan it ever approved. Both sides accepted the outcome.
Like government leaders everywhere, Collins has limited leverage with the public employee unions, since the terms of prior contracts continue indefinitely until new contracts are negotiated and signed. Collins has been insisting that new raises be offset by concessions.
He wants unionized employees to start contributing to the cost of their health care, and he wants new employees exempted from the current guarantee of free health care in retirement. Only one deal has been reached so far, with the nurses union. But most of the nurses work for Erie County Medical Center, not the government itself.
Collins says he knows when to back off. In a crucial moment during the state-inspired merger of operations between Buffalo General Hospital and ECMC, Collins filed a lawsuit in a gambit to free county government from having to cover years of ECMC losses that could lie ahead. He withdrew the lawsuit when it proved to only muddy the waters.
“So anyone who would say I can’t compromise or look at the big picture,” Collins said, “what transpired with Great Lakes Health, ECMC and Kaleida is an indication that sometimes I will swallow hard, accept the loss for the betterment of the community and understand that we will have our day.”
What’s it like to bargain with him? “My impression is he is understanding more that in the public arena, there has to be consensus-building to get something accomplished,” said Glaser, whose control board finances cannot be affected by Collins. “I also think he’s beginning to find out you have to pick your fights. In government, the leveraging points are different than they are in the private sector.”
Or are they? The Convention&Visitors Bureau found itself bargaining for survival because Collins had shut off its money, the universal motivator.
“The county executive is a person who I believe doesn’t like to move on things he believes in, but eventually he will,” said Jennifer J. Parker, the business owner who serves as CVB chairwoman this year.
Days later, Collins successfully pushed for the interim CVB director he chose to succeed Geiger—Drew Cerza, founder of the National Buffalo Wing Festival held annually in Buffalo. After that, Parker said this: “Once again, Chris Collins gets everything he wants.”
His demand that he be able to appoint board members to some of the county’s cultural agencies has opened him to accusations that he’s bullying nonprofits that can’t perform their service without county support. While the response from the cultural groups has been muted, legislators have accused Collins of extortion.
“The community groups, the smaller groups, are finding out that they have to do things his way, or they get nothing at all,” said Warren K. Galloway, who as a senior assistant to Giambra helped review cultural grants.
“I’m not suggesting they are doing anything wrong,” Collins said. “I don’t know of any major investor that doesn’t have board representation, whether it’s [activist investor] Carl Icahn or anything in the private sector. When you have a lot of skin in the game, you need representation.
“And I’ll just say this,” Collins added: “When you look at the names on the boards, you see a lot of the same names. In fact, you will see people serving on multiple boards. You will see people who have served for 20-plus years on boards. That’s part of what I call the status-quo mind-set of Buffalo.
“. . . And I just think from a healthy ongoing perspective, you need new leadership on occasion.”
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