Cities, Funds, and Money: Is it getting that grim?

I don't know what to be more shocked at. The fact that the Rochester delegation in Albany is coming head to head with the delegation from Buffalo over funds, or Senator Joe Robach getting all, "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry", right there at a panel hearing.

Check out the D&C story here.

The action centered on Sen. Joseph Robach, R-Greece, who quarreled with Democrats on a panel convened to parcel out the local aid portion of the state budget.

Robach even debated a bit with the Republican panel leader, Sen. Hugh Farley.

And at one point, Robach reached for the microphone and Farley refused to give it up, saying: "Joe, calm down."

At issue was the Rochester delegation's long-standing demand to receive aid at a rate more comparable to Buffalo's. Rochester gets about $271 per resident compared with $433 for Buffalo, $415 for Yonkers and $368 for Syracuse. As part of the 2006-07 state budget, the two houses are talking about boosting aid to municipalities across New York by roughly 18 percent. Lawmakers are attempting to adopt a state budget April 1, the start of the fiscal year.

Robach contended that rather than spread the increase evenly, lawmakers should give Rochester a bigger boost "to address the inequities."

Now, Robach is a former Democratic assemblyman who switched parties and ran for Senate when his district was going to gerrymandered away. So with that and the regional bickering included, I don't see this as a partisian thing at all. That doesn't make it any better either.

This is a mess, and this altercation is actually a bad thing. Buffalo is in terrible shape. Surf over to BuffaloPundit sometime and marvel at the crap they're going through over there with their County Executive and the State Control Board. Do they need money. Hell yes. Does Rochester? Hell yes.

The heart of the issue here is that the level of funding to Rochester is out of line with the level of funding to Buffalo, Syracuse, and Yonkers.

At issue was the Rochester delegation's long-standing demand to receive aid at a rate more comparable to Buffalo's. Rochester gets about $271 per resident compared with $433 for Buffalo, $415 for Yonkers and $368 for Syracuse. As part of the 2006-07 state budget, the two houses are talking about boosting aid to municipalities across New York by roughly 18 percent. Lawmakers are attempting to adopt a state budget April 1, the start of the fiscal year.

What the article doesn't make very clear is why this is about Rochester and Buffalo, and doesn't really involve Syracuse and Yonkers. I haven't fully grasped why this is about lowering aid to Buffalo and increasing aid to Rochester. Buffalo is hurt really bad and they need scratch. If funds have to come from somewhere, why there? Why not other places? Setting Rochester against Buffalo seems to be the worst kind of situation we could hope for politically.

Here's the real low-down dirty shame of this whole endevour: we are begging and scraping for state funds. Western New York should be unified in its approach in Albany to bring about reforms that will, possibly, let us have a competitive economy. Instead, we're pitched against each other, looking for scraps at the table of Albany. That's a pretty sad predictament to be in. Not to mention it should say a lot about how low we are sinking when it all comes down to this.

Begging for funds won't solve our problems. I have a great deal of respect for Senator Robach, as well as most of the representitives we have in Albany. However, state hand-outs only get us so far. We need fiscal reforms in order to lower taxes and the cost of doing business. We need them now and we're going to need the delegation from Buffalo to get it done. We're going to need all the help we can get.

And it has to happen soon. Before all of upstate needs a control board.