???New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo spoke at the Charles B. Sears Law Library in O'Brian Hall on Thursday in an effort to help promote legislation to help consolidate and reorganize local governments and other entities.
???Cuomo outlined his plan on how the government needs to reform itself in a similar fashion as corporate enterprises have downsized during the current financial crisis.
???"The old expression is that a crisis is a terrible opportunity to waste," Cuomo said. "It's true. We do have a crisis that calls for dramatic action and that's what this is."
???Cuomo is calling for the proposal of one simple stature and the repealing of the existing statutes currently on the books to make it easier for local entities to consolidate.
???The first part of Cuomo's proposal is to give county executives and county boards the power to reorganize the counties through its own means. The second portion would allow local village and town governments to be able to put consolidation proposals up for referendum. The third portion to Cuomo's plan would allow citizens of a municipality to petition for a vote on a reform.
???Cuomo said that this proposal would allow local government consolidation to occur more easily, as the current law makes its nearly impossible for changes to be made.
???"If you look at the current structure of the laws and the overlaying goal is that we need to [change], it is virtually impossible to navigate," Cuomo said. "If you actually look at the laws, they are integrated to the point where I couldn't believe that they were in the constitution."
???Cuomo also recognized that there might be some resistance to his proposed reforms from government officials that don't want to give up control.
???"Some people don't like change," Cuomo said. "People who have power don't want to give up power."
???According to Cuomo, the state government has considered for many decades the possibility of consolidating services but never fully implemented the reforms. However, he sees the current financial dilemma that New York is facing as opportunity to go through with these changes.
???Cuomo also felt that reorganizing local municipalities would also provide a better answer to the state's fiscal woes rather than the traditional practices of raising taxes and cutting spending, sensing that these acts in reality are counterproductive.
???"You raise taxes now, you are going to be redistributing the burden on individuals and families and it will be so negative that it will make the state of New York less hospitable," Cuomo said.
???Cuomo noted that New York residents pay the highest amount of local taxes in the country, roughly $73 per $1,000 of income. This is sharply higher than the average of $43 per $1,000 of income by the rest of the country. By cutting down the estimated 10,500 governments in the state, he thinks that this will allow the Empire state to become more competitive economically.
???Cuomo also cited the fact that school districts in New York have dramatically condensed their numbers over the last several decades. He stated that in the 1930s, there were 10,000 school districts in the Empire state and there are now fewer than 700.
???"If you can tackle and manage the consolidation of school districts then you can do this [reform]," Cuomo said.
???Law student Brendan Sheehan was hopeful that these changes would be helpful for New York's economy.
???"Possibly empowering the citizens could help but having the town boards get the power to cut entities would be hard because their own jobs are on the line," Sheehan said. "But with the economic crisis it could go through."
???After Cuomo's speech, several Buffalo-area political leaders took the podium to throw their support behind his reform proposal and that they were committed to making sure the legislation made it through the proper channels of government.
???In a sign of bipartisan support, numerous Western New York political figures such as state senators Dale Volker, William Stachowski and Michael H. Ranzenhofer and state assembly members Sam Hoyt, Francine DelMonte and Mark Schroeder attended the speech.
???Hoyt and Volker also stated their backing of keeping the University at Buffalo Law School as the only one public one in existence within the state.
???"Like Attorney General Cuomo [says], we don't need to make more, we need to make what we have more extraordinary," Hoyt said.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
