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 Lord
Byron
The elections
are over and the results could be worse. Paladino-puppet Kevin
Helfer gained only about a 5% bump from his Buffalo-Niagara
Partnership and Buffalo News endorsements, so now we can calmly go
back to bashing Byron Brown. Brown needs to make it clear from day
one that he really is going to do things differently, or we won’t be
the only ones.
Many incumbents
will be out in January, at the county and town levels, either
because they lost or they saw the writing on the wall and chose not
to run. Unfortunately, County Legislature Chairman George Holt
wasn’t among them, and we’re also stuck with Sheriff Tim Howard. But
Holt is a non-factor—although he does plan to run again for
Chairman, and letting him have that position again would be a
travesty.
Overall there’s
a lot of fresh blood, and unseated Republicans. The Legislature will
be overwhelmingly Democratic now, and unfettered by the universally
shunned County Executive, whose approval they need not seek to pass
any old thing they want—provided they don’t find a way to split and
struggle anyhow. Perhaps. But who will watch them? Democrat Mark
Poloncarz scored an upset in the race for the all-important county
Comptroller position – who knows; maybe he’ll even do the job.
He’d better.
They’d all better, the Mayor and the Legislature especially. We’ll
be watching, as will others, and we’d better see some fucking action
this time, or it’s time to start congregating and lighting torches.
 Grelicked
One of the more
surprising results was in the race for Amherst Town Supervisor, in
which rich, high-profile incumbent Susan Grelick lost to UB Prof
Satish Mohan, an underdog candidate from the beginning who won by a
significant margin, despite the fact that he is named Satish
Mohan. How did it happen? One obvious reason is that Mohan
promised to cut taxes by 15% without reducing services, which seems
impossible, and coupled with other Mohan campaign promises, like his
messianic promises to "end flooding" and sinking homes in Amherst,
makes Mohan seem like, well, a surprisingly savvy politician who
knows how to exaggerate his head off to get elected.
Another reason
is that Amherst Democratic Chair Dennis Ward didn’t lift a finger to
help Grelick, according to a campaign staffer. It’s fairly well
known that Ward, along with his brother, Amherst town board member
Dan Ward, don’t exactly love Grelick, for supporting candidates not
endorsed by them and for her cozy relationships with developers. But
to the point of letting a GOP candidate take her seat? To be fair,
the Republicans wouldn’t touch Mohan until he took the nomination.
Also, Amherst
voters have been ticked off by a recent rash of reassessments of
their property values, which amounted to a de facto rise in property
taxes. What if anything Grelick had to do with the reassessments we
don’t know, but people tend to take aim at the most visible member
of their local regime when they get angry.
 Beyond
Control
Now that the
election is over and we no longer have any recourse against them,
the exiting county legislature has finally found the fortitude to
raise our sales tax and fend off a “hard” county control board for
now. How brave. Of course, the board will continue to soak up our
tax money (over a million a year in sales tax, according to the
Buffalo News). Clearly, this situation is about as retarded as it
gets.
Some people,
fed up with local politicians, would prefer a hard control board for
the county, despite the fact that it effectively eliminates
representative government, which seems just a little bit too
unconstitutional for our tastes. But lets not forget how many of
those politicians will be gone next year, precisely because voters
were fed up. That’s how representative government is supposed
to work. What would be great is if our newly elected legislators
would actually represent us, and make the situation better all by
themselves. Then maybe someday we could kick the control board
altogether.
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