Published: October 02, 2009 02:50 am      

TOM CHRISTY: Same names, same message

It’s very difficult to stand alone and tell the emperor he has no clothes (much less tell your employer). The payment for doing your job carefully, for speaking the truth even in the face of tremendous pressure, is often persecution, ruination of your career and public humiliation of not only yourself but your family. Eventually, over time, there is a chance you are vindicated and even revered. But it’s like being one of those artists who is dirt poor in his lifetime only to have paintings sell for hundreds of millions of dollars after his death. Not many people sign up for that business model.

It’s also difficult to “warn” Niagara County residents that they are getting very close to the people being blamed for corruption and need to be more careful. Aside from being the highest taxed municipality in the entire nation, aside from hiring lawyers in greater quantity and faster than any thriving law firm, Niagara County has sent a few politicians to jail every once in a while. Niagara County, small in size and stature, has proven no stranger to skirting the rules of the game over the years.

Like any bad spy novel, the same names are starting to appear again and again in the story of the decline of New York state. There is now a projected $13 billion deficit in the state budget, the state Senate was shut down and one of the co-conspirators in that scenario is on trial in New York City for felony assault — cutting his girlfriend in the face (a gash that required 40 stitches). But for all of that, the two names that are most frequently mentioned across the entire state are two local icons: Steve Pigeon and George Maziarz.

In countless stories throughout New York City and Albany — the two outlets that cover state politics the closest — those two names appear time and again as the persons who orchestrated the Senate meltdown. Now, Pigeon is the central character in the accusations being made by an assistant district attorney against his boss, Frank Sedita.

Mark Sacha investigated the seemingly trivial and hard-to-prove charge of campaign finance violations lodged against Steve Pigeon. Sacha apparently had what he thought was an airtight case of money laundering. He produced a 50-page report and delivered it to his boss, the Erie County district attorney. It was ignored. There was an election and a new DA was sworn in. Sacha again gave the report to the new DA. He was demoted two days later and told if he didn’t like it he could quit.

It’s nearly impossible to fathom: a lawyer with two decades of experience presents evidence of serious crime to the elected district attorney and is demoted for it. Unfortunately, anyone with even a tangential familiarity to politics in Western New York knows this is business as usual in our community. The culture of political corruption is such that we are numb to any and all forms and merely glance at the headlines and go about our day.

This did not creep up on people in the dark of night. Erie County voters — perhaps because of the very people who are accused by Sacha — elected their current district attorney, Frank Sedita, even though this case was debated during the campaign.

Diane LaVallee, maybe the toughest prosecutor the region has seen, brought this very issue up and questioned Sedita in a debate prior to the election. Change the time and place and LaVallee would be that person standing in front of the rolling tank in Tiananmen Square in Beijing China. She’s that tough when it comes to the truth. But talent and integrity will only get you 22 percent of the vote in Erie County. What we’re learning here is that to get beyond 22 percent in an election in Western New York, you might have to do more than simply be qualified.

There is a chance that 10 years from now Pigeon, Golisano, Maziarz and all of their actions will be proven to have resurrected New York state into a thriving and rejuvenated part of the United States. That is what we have to hope for at this point. If a report given to the district attorney by the No. 3 prosecutor in the office gets thrown in the trash and the messenger demoted, we cannot hope for anything else. New York state is now on the train being driven by those three powerful men.

What we need is a measuring stick of progress. When everyone measures progress on their own terms everyone can be right. If there is no metric by which we measure, then everyone can claim success because it met their narrow goal. Our community needs to know what the goals are so we can all pull in the same direction.

Tom Christy is the founder of FAIR Government, a non-political and non-editorial educational foundation dealing with local government issues. The Web site is www.fair-government.org. He encourages communication and can be reached via e-mail at aim1986@mac.com.