EDITORIALS
Planning opportunity lost
Failure of county commission concept is a victory for turf protection
Imagine corporate turn-around artist Chris Collins walking into his newest acquisition to find that it had 44 different departments and divisions, their managers all doing what make them popular in their own break rooms but showing little if any concern for the good of the whole corporation.
How long do you think the Six Sigma business efficiency expert would allow that situation to continue?
Yet when Erie County Executive Chris Collins looks at how 44 cities, towns and villages handle their planning and zoning decisions, he not only sees nothing wrong with this sprawl of governments, he goes out of his way to stop the kind of upgrade the system clearly needs.
It is now up to Collins, working with the Erie County Legislature and the municipalities, to come up with a joint planning effort that can win approval, because the status quo is far too expensive.
The Legislature voted to create a county planning commission, a common feature of modern metropolitan government, a body that would consider the interests of the whole of Erie County in evaluating rezoning applications and public works projects as they are proposed. But Collins, dismissing the idea as a waste of money, vetoed the legislation and, Thursday, a move to override that veto in the Legislature failed by a single vote.
The executive’s claim that such a body would be just another expensive layer of government would make sense if the existing expensive fragmentation of governments provided proper oversight of planning issues. But they do not and, by their nature, cannot. The strength with which those fragments of governments argued their brief against a planning commission basically confirmed that the underlying cause of their opposition was turf protection, not taxpayer protection.
The status quo virtually begs each municipality to engage in the kind of zoning-for-dollars that approves the next big-box store or housing subdivision without regard for the damage it might do to existing developments and the strain it might put on roads, utilities, law enforcement, schools and other tax-supported services.
As passed by the Legislature, a county planning commission would not have the power to block any zoning petition or road construction. But it would focus public attention on all such projects and put needed pressure on all decision-makers to consider the good of the whole before they act. Was that really too much to ask?
Collins’ argument that his own county planning staff can fulfill that function is true, up to a point. But it ignores the fact that no Rath Building staffer will ever have the public standing necessary to push policies that would be politically unpopular in a town or village but fiscally responsible for the whole community.
Only a broadly based planning commission, after conducting public hearings and taking public votes, can hope to have that standing and clout.
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