Echo chamber: The Local Chatter (May 5, 2008)
Rep. TOM REYNOLDS has been raking in campaign contributions in spite of the fact he is retiring. The Buffalo News reported that in the in three months before announcing his retirement Reynolds took in $267,113. When he finally turns the lights off in his congressional office for the last time Reynolds will have $1.8 million to spread around however he sees fit. While he can’t go out and purchase a new car for himself, what these guys usually do is get a new job, then cozy up to someone still in office, make a fat contribution, and then get that elected official to hire their new company for some juicy taxpayer funded work. While the donation to the support the elected official is often publicized, the contract that comes down the road is rarely mentioned. Reynolds does have $822,468 from a “leadership” Political Action Committee (PAC) that he can do whatever he wants with. “Former members can take leadership PACS after leaving Congress and put it in their pockets,” Fred Werheimer, president of Democracy 21, told the News. It’s easy to understand why republicans claim they want to cut taxes…. it leaves more money in people’s pockets to hand over to them.
ORCHARD PARK is installing 704 photovoltaic panels on the town’s highway garage to generate electricity. They’re projecting a savings of $3,000 to $4,000 a year. Orchard Park Highway Superintendent Fred Piasecki Jr. said his department is the first highway department in NY state to install the solar panels. The panels, installed by Solar Liberty of Williamsville, are being paid for by a grant of $192,192 from the NY State Energy Research and Development Authority.
KEVIN GAUGHAN would be happy to hear that the Batvia Police and the Genesee County sheriff’s dispatch service will merge AND receive $410,000 in state legislator grants to finance the transition. City dispatchers are leaving their downtown offices in October and moving to the Sheriff’s administration building.
TOM CHRISTY, television talk show host of “Legislative Journal” might be returning to the airwaves. Christy fell afoul of Lockport Community Television after having Geoff Kelly from Artvoice on his show talking about radiation contamination in Niagara County. Apparently he was only supposed to talk about good things. But the Common Council in North Tonawanda will be looking at a measure tomorrow that calls for the return of Christy.
March 21, 2008
Sorry, Tom
We don’t want to say it’s our fault that Tom Christy’s show was canceled, but consider this:
1. In late November Lou Ricciuti and I appeared on Christy’s program to talk about Niagara County’s legacy of environmental problems, including toxic chemical and radioactive waste. Christy invited us to talk about these issues after he’d asked the Niagara County Manager Greg Lewis to come on the program to do the same. Lewis at first had agreed, but reneged when Christy made it clear he wanted to talk about hazardous waste and not just tax incentive programs for brownfields. (At which point Lewis sent an email to Christy saying he’d “walked off a cliff” this time and that Lewis would no longer appear on Legislative Journal for any reason.) So Christy turned to us.
2. The week after our appearance, the board president of LCTV and Christy’s producer took Christy out for pizza and told him that some members of the board wanted to edit or cancel his show. They suggested he ought to tone it down a bit, and even produced a document with some guidelines, which they asked to withdraw when Christy suggested that such guidelines might tread toward censorship. The board president told Christy that she didn’t know how much longer she could protect him from politically connected board members who didn’t like him asking questions like “What’s in our soil?”
3. Subsequently, Legislative Journal was suspended for four weeks, through the end of December and the beginning of January—the first such hiatus in Christy’s 10 years on the program.
4. When the show resumed, LCTV’s board attorney hastily called a meeting, then came to Christy with a newly acquired opinion from the state’s public service commission that said the board may choose to exercise editorial control over the government channel. The opinion was delivered in response to a letter from LCTV’s board, which mentioned that “several elected officials” wanted Christy’s show canceled. (LCTV’s board continues to pretend that it canceled Legislative Journal because of “anonymous complaints.” Kudos to Jim Heaney at the Buffalo News for getting a copy of that letter.) The commission has said subsequently that it was not ordering the station to exercise editorial control, and that its current actions might violate the station’s bylaws, which prohibit censorship.
This led to the imposition of restrictions on the show and eventually to its outright cancellation last week. Here’s Christy talking to AV about the issue in our office yesterday. We’ll post more of this interview on Monday.
The Niagara Fall Reporter’s Mike Hudson wrote a good piece on the subject, and so did the editor of the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal.
