County and City In Conflict About Downtown Hotel --- More Talk of Governmental Consolidation

In County Executive Nick Pirro's piece in the Post Standard (1/23/2005), he faults Mayor Matt Driscoll for refusing to grant 25 years of real estate tax forgiveness to the developer of the proposed new hotel that is planned to service the Oncenter . Matt, on the other hand, wants the County or the developer to guarantee that the City will not lose more from the lack of real estate taxes than it will gain in sales tax revenue and income from the convention center garage.
No doubt both men believe in good faith that their hard line positions are justified by the financial difficulties faced by their constituencies. The County has to deal with rising welfare and medicaid expenses mandated by the State. The City suffers from a greatly underfunded educational system, aging housing stock and an ever shrinking real estate tax base.
Finger pointing by Nick accomplishes nothing. The question comes to mind why was Matt left out of the discussions between the County and the developer when they were first initiated? The City is a major stakeholder. Instead of inviting the City's input, the County chose to come to an understanding with the developer, run what was agreed upon through the County legislature, and then tell the City it must take it or leave it. The City, being asked to gamble millions of dollars of revenue over a twenty five year period based upon the County's questionable economic forecast, quite naturally says, in effect, not so fast.
Nick also says that there should be a merger of such City and County functions as economic development, purchasing, information technology, accounting and tax collection. In the abstract, he is of course correct. He might also add to the list police protection and roads and streets. He says the City has refused to even discuss consolidating economic development. If this is so, clearly something is seriously wrong. Both Nick and Matt have publicly proclaimed their support for the concept of governmental consolidation at the local level. What then is the basis for the impasse?
Is Matt concerned that the departments that Nick proposes to take over are so extremely important to the independence of City government that they must be retained? Is Matt worried that his political powers will be greatly diminished if County government is given the power to decide which vendors shall do business with the City? Would a County controlled office of economic development development tend to favor the location of new businesses in the towns rather than within the City? At what point would the City have transferred out so much of its intellectual property that the Mayor would be almost totally subservient to County government?
There is no doubt that at this point in the twenty-first century one entity should replace County and City governments that are too often duplicative and at cross purposes. Piece-meal changes will take forever. There needs to be a total merger from top to bottom.. Such a substantial change in governmental structure requires farsighted leadership on the part of the County Executive and the Mayor as well as the full support of our representatives in Albany who will have to sponsor statutory changes to expedite consolidation. It is a daunting task but it can be done. In the meanwhile, it is important that Nick and Matt return to the negotiating table and keep talking.