An effective government is an efficient government. Under the current executive, Erie County is neither effective nor efficient. Government should be lean while providing residents with the services they want at the lowest possible cost. We don’t need to cut services, we need to cut government. Erie County has over 750 special taxing districts – governments – which represent over 10% of all districts across NYS. Erie County does not have over 10% of the state’s population or tax base; we should not have over 10% of its governments. It is time for our community to come together to reduce the amount of government we have by sharing services and eliminating redundancies in our current system.
As Comptroller, I reported on ways in which millions of dollars could be saved by eliminating repetitive government or by sharing services. In 2008, I issued a report identifying more than 30 individual assessors across the county (the entire state of California had only 59) and laid out a way to save millions of taxpayer dollars annually by combining or sharing assessing functions. The Buffalo News commended my efforts and called on the county to take the lead in reducing the cost of assessment. Unfortunately, the current County Executive failed to show leadership and did nothing to address the issue. He believes our current system of bloated government needs no reform because more government offers him more opportunities to hire more of his friends.
As YOUR County Executive, I pledge to continue working with our partners in government to make Erie County and its underlying municipalities a leaner, more efficient provider of services to our residents. Only by reducing the amount of government through the elimination of duplicative services can we compete in a global economy for the businesses of tomorrow.