Bonnie & Clyde

We were honestly unsurprised yesterday when we read that Niagara County Legislator Jason A. Zona of Niagara Falls was proposing, in essence, an effort to grab sales tax dollars away from county government to help what the Buffalo News termed “needy municipalities.”

  

One can hardly blame Zona, who represents Niagara Falls, for wanting to steal other people’s money; after all, if any community meets the definition of a “needy municipality,” the decaying city that has been uncharitably described as “Detroit with a View” and “Nagasaki Falls” over the years certainly does.  So, while we are unimpressed by Zona’s larcenous idea, we’re not surprised.

What does surprise us, though, is that Zona seems to be little more than the Sundance Kid to Legislator Clyde Burmaster’s Butch Cassidy.  Or maybe more accurately, Jason is Bonnie and Clyde is…well, Clyde.

This is an incredibly bad idea, and we can only imagine most of Niagara County’s 12 town supervisors would have to have a problem with it.  After all, this is a naked attempt to grab money from them.

Upon reading the resolution, it became apparent that Zona, who represents the Town of Niagara, is looking to gain that town a larger share of sales tax revenues based on the siting of the Fashion Outlet mall there.  Which might seem fair, at first, until someone actually examines how county government raises its revenue.

The county gets money, primarily, from three pots.  The largest, by far, is state aid.  Most programs run by the county are mandated by the state, and while every politician rails against unfunded mandates, the state does, in fact, fund many of them to a large extent.  However, the county must come up with more than 1/3 of its own money, to pay for, among other things, the local share of social services and Medicaid, and sheriff’s road patrols in their entirety.

That means the communities with the highest property values pay a disproportionate share of the property tax burden.  Interestingly, some of the highest-valued housing stock in the entire county can be found in Burmaster’s own district: places like Youngstown Estates and several high-end neighborhoods in the Town of Lewiston.

This blog does not attempt to understand what makes Clyde Burmaster tick, but it sure seems strange that he’s willing to sacrifice his own constituents to benefit Zona’s.

We just hope that the rest of the Legislature’s Republicans don’t follow Burmaster’s lead.  And, come to think of it, we will say the same about the supervisors of the county’s 11 towns not named “Niagara.” 

Considering Dennis Brochey is closely aligned with Zona and Burmaster, though, we can’t help but wonder if he will follow Bonnie and Clyde’s lead and rob his own constituents.