March 28, 2011
By Eric DuVall
Some quick food for thought:
• Erie County Executive Chris Collins will run for re-election. I haven’t agreed with everything he’s done but I don’t think he’s been an abject failure by any stretch, either.
But if his opponent stands up to him on one issue, let it be this: Collins’ insistence that Erie County be “run like the business that it is.”
Not to quibble, but county government isn’t a business. It’s a government.
This isn’t just semantics, either. There are fundamental differences between for-profit entities and a government, which is supposed to represent the best interests of the people it serves.
As a businessman himself, surely Collins understands this. Does the electric company he owns get to make laws mandating people give it money? Because the county he runs can do that.
Quite the business model.