The Middle Class Nightmare

Drew Carey's latest video for Reason magazine takes a look at the dark forces ripping apart America's middle class. The horror!

The Curious Case of the Misplaced Press Release: Part Deux

Sadly, it appears that the missing press release I went in search of yesterday is no longer "intended for public view", at least according to Mayor Roefaro's nephew Angelo. That means the press release expressing the Mayor's displeasure with people ignoring his press releases is something he'd now like us to ignore.

Heh.

Here are the emails I exchanged with Angelo on Friday, with my name redacted (because I like my privacy) and timestamps adjusted to Eastern time:

From: Gear Zanzibar
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:01 PM
To: aroefaro@cityofutica.com
Subject: Open Letter to the Observer-Dispatch

Hello,

I was wondering if you could forward me a copy of the open letter to Donna Donovan and the Observer-Dispatch that was posted in the "Press Release" section of the City's homepage on February 12th, 2008. It seems to have gone missing.

Cordially,
***** ********

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Angelo Roefaro wrote:
It was only intended for public view during the time that it was posted.

Thank you,
Angelo Roefaro

From: Gear Zanzibar
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 11:55 AM
To: Angelo Roefaro
Subject: Re: Open Letter to the Observer-Dispatch

Thank you for your quick response. Could you tell me who the records access officer for the original HTML version of the document would be?

Cordially,
***** ********

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Angelo Roefaro wrote:

Wow, I don't even know what it means. I put it on the site and I took it down.

From: Gear Zanzibar
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 1:45 PM
To: Angelo Roefaro
Subject: Re: Open Letter to the Observer-Dispatch


The records access officer would be the person in charge of handling a FOIL request for the document in question. Since it appears I'll have to make a formal request, much to my chagrin, I'd appreciate if you could provide me with the name and email address of the person in charge of such matters.

Cordially,
***** ********

Hopefully I'll hear back from the Mayor's office on Monday so I can send in the FOIL request to the correct individual. Keep in mind that all this effort is for a press release, something that by it's very nature is intended to invite attention and comment.

Behind the Scenes at Mayor Roefaro's Day Job

Direct from the embalming room at the Scala & Roefaro funeral home in Utica:



And when I say "behind the scenes", I mean it. Meet the cast and crew, and enjoy the rest of the gallery (in a far more benign context), over here.

The Curious Case of the Misplaced Press Release

Earlier this week, on Tuesday to be exact, the Utica Mayor's office issued an unusual press release criticizing what they viewed as unfair media coverage of the administration in the Utica Observer-Dispatch. I had planned on Fisking the release this evening, but it appears that sometime this afternoon it was removed from the website for reasons unknown. I've emailed Mayor Roefaro's press representative, his nephew Angelo Roefaro, requesting a copy of the misplaced missive.

Hopefully I'll hear back from him tomorrow.

Update: Request denied. It appears I'll have to make a formal FOIL request if I want to see it again.

With Friends Like These

It looks like the honeymoon is over for Dave Roefaro:

A political party leader who endorsed Mayor David Roefaro spoke out Thursday against a proposed 7.25 percent property-tax increase and called the budget irresponsible.

Utica resident Julie Miller, who is the chairwoman of the city and Oneida County Conservative parties, was one of four people who spoke at the Board of Estimate & Apportionment's public hearing Thursday for the proposed 2008-09 city budget.

Miller said residents are outraged with the proposed property-tax increase that the public cannot afford.

I was under the impression that Miller's endorsement of Roefaro was a matter of political expediency based on a mutual "Anyone but Julian" agreement, but I didn't expect it to fall apart quite this fast. The quick turnaround in Miller's opinions of the Mayor may have something to do with Roefaro's massive about-face on raising taxes. Today he's pushing for a 7.25% increase. Before the election, as this October 31st story in the OD points out, he was singing a different tune:

It’s very disappointing that the current administration has begun to operate as if it defines revenue and taxes in the same context. Taxes should not be any city’s most imperative revenue driver. The city taxpayer is burdened by the increase of over 30 percent the current administration has imposed upon them, an increase officials tiptoe around. The average homeowner can’t afford an increase.

Even more surprising is the fact that Roefaro is now relying on the same budgetary slight-of-hand involving funds from the sale of the water board that he excoriated Julian for:

Today, the Julian administration is balancing and paying our budget using large portions of revenue the city generated when the Hanna administration sold the water board.

When this money is gone, it’s gone and so is our ability to borrow. In this light, our future looks bleak at best. Creating and maintaining a prudent budget reserve and providing for budget corrections in an economic downturn, will save Utica millions over the life of a loan in borrowing costs.

That was back in October. Today Roefaro is raiding the exact same fund to prop up yet another good-time budget and doing his best to cement Utica's title as one of the most heavily taxed municipalities in the country. Worse, he's used those tax dollars to place a seemingly never ending stream of friends and family on the city payroll.

But I digress from tonight's meeting.

Here's another gem:

Roefaro told the audience that he's met with viable companies who want to bring jobs to Utica, companies that he said can't be named publicly yet, but “if we have a negative connotation no one will want to come here.”

Ah, the famous "companies that can't be named" so beloved by Oneida County politicians. Would those be the same companies beating down the door to build at the Marcy Super-Mega-Nano Center for the past decade? Or perhaps they're the "companies that can't be named" that were supposed to flock to the Griffis Institute? The Homeland Security Center? Or any one of the innumerable multi-million dollar boondoggles the area has been saddled with over the past twenty years?

And finally a chilling prediction, or perhaps a veiled threat, that perfectly encapsulates Roefaro's vision for the city:

"Things have to get worse before the city can improve."

Well, at least he's setting a goal for himself.

NYRI's Kabuki Theater Plays Out

What a shock! What a surprise! The backers of the NYRI powerline proposal are considering some alternate routes:

NYRI's supplemental application will be filed on or around Feb. 22 with the state Public Service Commission, according to a public notice the power line company has placed in several upstate newspapers.

The notice lays out alternative routes in addition to the proposed route. Additional routes studied include Marcy South and running the line along the Thruway corridor, NYRI spokesman David Kalson said.

The Thruway route, however, was not mapped out in the media notice.

Anyone want to lay down a bet that the Marcy South route will turn out to be the perfect "compromise" for everyone involved?

I hate to say "I told ya so", but...

In response to a question, I think a version of NYRI is unstoppable. I also think the current "use the railroad right of way" proposal is part of an elaborate shell game designed to distract opposition. In response to protests the interests behind NYRI will forge a "compromise" involving the use of an existing power line route. Everyone will pat themselves on the back for a job well done, the politicians get to take credit for "stopping NYRI", and the powerlines still get built in someone elses back yard. Which is exactly what I think was planned from the start.

Keep an eye on the Upstate power companies and special interests doling out political contributions and I think you'll notice a pattern. One that, I'm sure, is just a total coincidence.

Heh.

Skippygate II: Electric Boogaloo

The other shoe has finally dropped in the Skippygate saga:

United States Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby announced today the Indictment of two Oriskany area men on fraud charges.

James M. Kernan, 59, of Utica Street, and Robert J. Anderson, also known as "Skip Anderson," 64, of Utica Street, were named in a fifteen count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Syracuse on January 30.

Kernan the President of Oriska Insurance Company. Kernan and Anderson are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in addition to ten substantive counts of mail and wire fraud.

The Indictment charges that Kernan and Anderson engaged in a scheme to defraud by marketing workers compensation insurance policies through Oriska Insurance Company which they knew Oriska was not authorized or licensed to write. It is charged that Kernan and Anderson represented that Oriska could provide insurance coverage for workers in states where Oriska was not licensed.

Further, the Indictment alleges that Kernan and Anderson marketed workers compensation policies with high deductible endorsements during a time period when Oriska was not authorized by the New York State Insurance Department to issue policies containing such terms.

Hopefully, during this year's election someone will finally ask how Congressman Arcuri's campaign got their hands on a copy of the FBI search warrant for Oriska.

If you remember, Arcuri steadfastly refused to return thousands of dollars in dodgy donations from Oriska's owners and staff right up until the FBI actually started hauling documents out of the building, and then he only returned the donations from Anderson and Kernan. It wasn't until over a week later, again after repeated refusals to even consider returning all the money, that he finally rolled over and coughed up the cash.

Curiously, for reasons that still escape me, Ray Meier never made an issue out of Arcuri's odd behavior during the 2006 election. The timing of the refunds, and the specificity of the funds returned, makes it clear that Arcuri's campaign had a copy of the FBI warrant the morning of the raid. Since the federales aren't in the habit of faxing legal documents to political campaigns it seems obvious that Arcuri himself, or his staff in the DA's office, used the named targets of the search warrant to decide which donations were too hot to keep.

The ethics, or lack thereof, of using your official position to protect your candidacy from embarrassing political revelations should be obvious.

Everybody's Talkin' At Me

Strikeslip, who I think is the last Utica/Rome blogger covering area politics, gives a heads up for a new message forum:

A friend directed me to a new forum for the Utica area: Clipper's Corner. A lot of long time posters from some of our other area forums have found their way there too, and are making lively conversation. I've added it to my list of forum links on the side bar.

I'm not a member of the forum, at least not yet, but it seems to be doing a good job of offering up some lively discussions featuring opinions from across the political spectrum. After the total meltdown of the Utica forum on Topix, a trolling effort I don't think was random or coincidental in the least, it's a nice change of pace.

The March of Days

Yesterday would have been Michelle Hutchings 28th birthday:

Hutchings was last seen around 11:45 p.m. July 30, 2006, in the 1400 block of Bleecker Street in East Utica.

Seelman Saturday said she and investigators still keep in regular contact with each other, and she’s hopeful her daughter eventually will be found.

Anyone with information about the case can call the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office at 765-2244.

I wish I had the optimism that Michelle's mother does, but I'm afraid that if and when she is ever found it won't be a happy occasion. Worse, I don't think she'll be the last petite brunette to vanish from the streets of Central New York.

The Exodus Rolls On

I'm just one of the thousands of former New Yorkers that have fled the "Empire State" over the last decade because of the state's abysmal condition. Unfortunately, our departure is going to have a serious impact on those of you that are left:

New York State’s population grew by a hair in the year that ended July 1, but because Sun Belt states like Nevada, Arizona and Florida are growing faster, the Empire State stands to lose seats in Congress after the 2010 Census.

An analysis by Queens College of population trends suggests that Texas will gain as many as four Congressional seats and Florida’s delegation will grow by two, while New York and Ohio will lose two seats each.

The projected decline in House representation is only the latest installment of long trend.

New York’s delegation in the House of Representatives peaked at 45 seats, following the 1930 Census. As other states grew more quickly, New York’s share in the House got smaller. Now, New York has only 29 seats, and stands to have only 27 after the next Census.

That's a pretty damn harsh dose of reality. It's bad enough that New York is just a shadow of what it was nearly a century ago, but the re-apportionment is likely to have some nasty direct consequences for the Utica/Rome area in particular. There's a good chance that the 23rd and 24th congressional districts will be the ones that see the biggest changes as their borders are redrawn to cover even more of the state's sparsely populated northern territory. That means less political clout for the state as a whole and less regional power both at the state and federal level.

On the bright side, there's still plenty of time for you to move down here to Texas before the 2010 census. Over the next year you'll be able to pick up some amazing housing bargains as the sub-prime meltdown spins off a slew of undervalued properties. Even better, in the unlikely event you can't find a job that pays more than what you were earning in New York you'll still have more money in your pocket thanks to our low property and sales taxes.

Oh, and did I mention we don't have a state income tax?

Merry Christmas!

Here's wishing you and yours a safe and happy holiday.

Sorry about the total lack of updates, but things have been understandably hectic with the move. We're currently living in a rented house just outside Austin (while we wait for home prices to drop even further as the housing "crisis" progresses), but even with most of our stuff in storage at my workshop things couldn't be better.

Oddly enough, none of us have particularly missed having snow on Christmas. Snowflakes gently drifting down from the sky are nice, but I'm rather enjoying our forecast of sunny skies and a high near seventy.

I'm Lovin' Texas

We're still weeks away from moving to Texas, but I'm already loving the state. I spent yesterday working out the details of moving my guns and had a simply amazing experience. Barring any legal complications with states we'll be driving through, which I'm still checking on, I should be able to transport my longarms locked inside a secure shipping container.

Handguns, on the other hand, are a bit more complicated. I have two pistols that I'll have to transfer to a dealer here so he can ship them to a dealer outside Austin, where I'll ultimately pick them up. Just a few minutes after I contacted a dealer in Texas he called back to say that not only would he do the transfer gratis, other than the normal mandated charges for paperwork, but he'd throw in a free membership for his shooting range and a couple of tickets to their monthly BBQ in December.

I don't even live there yet and I'm already getting invited to parties. That, my friends, is hospitality.

Unreal Estate

So I'm on the phone with our real estate agent, who happens to be a family friend, when the following conversation occurs:

"Does your house have any special features?"

"Oh, yeah. It's fully wired for cat 5 and coax with a central switcher in the basement."

"Anything else?"

"There's a generator room in the garage for a backup generator. It's already wired up to code and has a nice muffler system installed. We can leave the generator if the buyer wants it. I also installed some heavy duty wiring for my welding gear and the bomb shelter."

-pause-

"A bomb shelter?"

"Yeah, there's a ten by fifteen bomb shelter off the basement TV room. Reinforced concrete, air vents, steel door...the whole deal."

"Er...where we watched movies? That room?"

"Yeah."

"How do you get to the bomb shelter?"

"Through the door. It's hidden behind the shelving with all the books and DVDs."

-pause-

"Okay. Uh...so why do you have a bomb shelter with a hidden entrance?"

"Because somebody built it. From the junk we found inside I'd guess back in the fifties."

"Do you use it?"

"Yeah, it's where I play my guitar. I installed the wiring to power my amps. Even with the levels cranked up you can't hear it in the house."

"So you have an underground bomb shelter with a secret entrance and heavy duty wiring so you can play a guitar?"

-pause-

"Well, yeah. I don't play very well."

-pause-

"I think we might want to leave out the bomb shelter in the listing. If anyone seems interested in that kind of thing we'll tell them about it, but otherwise I'm going to describe it as a wine cellar."

Letters, We Get Letters

I want to thank everyone that's emailed since yesterday, and I apologize for not replying to every message individually. There was a consistent number of questions in most of them and I thought it would save time answering them all at once.

The most prominent was "Are you sick again?" Physically, not at all. Now that I'm actually taking the time to sleep, instead of zooming around for twenty hours a day, my health couldn't be better. Mentally...eh, not so much. I'm not suffering from anything pathological, but, and I hope you'll pardon my frankness, the constant stream of bullshit that issues forth from our politicians just wore me down.

I think the real breaking point was the Mitch Ford situation. The only thing I found more infuriating than his blatantly racist attitudes was the collective shrug it seemed to generate in the local media and the population as a whole. I've grown to accept a certain amount of casual racism- when you're as lily white as I am and your significant other is as black as coal you get used to it- but the in-your-face arrogance of reducing another human being to subhuman status with the epithet "nigger" is simply unforgivable. In most of this country that incident would have been a major scandal. Here, it was a blip.

That, needless to say, did not inspire a great deal of happiness in our household. After that it became increasingly clear this just wasn't a place we wanted to live anymore.

The other big question was "Why Texas?" Two of our closest friends moved there last year. Since then they've been engaging in a steady campaign of propaganda to convince us to join them and it finally took hold.

From a tax standpoint Texas looks like paradise, at least when compared to New York. There's no state income tax, the combined state and local sales taxes are equal to or lower than anywhere in New York, and local property taxes are quite a bit less in relation to the elevated real estate prices.

Secondary costs are also significantly smaller. Electricity and energy? 60% of New York's bloated rates. Housing? Significantly higher prices, but it's a market, unlike New York, where people actually want to live, producing a natural market pressure for increased values. Water and sewage? Comparable to New York's despite our much-vaunted natural water supply. Health insurance? Significantly less than New York thanks to a state government that isn't completely beholden to health care unionistas.

Ultimately, our decision came down to quality of life and in that respect the Austin area just blows away anywhere in New York except for Manhattan. The city is home to a thriving arts community, including an amazingly productive crop of filmmakers. The weather is..well..perfect. The schools, while costing significantly less than the ineffective warehouses we have in New York, actually produce students with an education.

Two other factors also weighed heavily in our decision. First, a politician in Texas that calls a black candidate a nigger has effectively ended their career. That's a nice change of pace from Oneida County. Second, fireworks are legal. If you want a handy guide to how valuable the concept of personal freedom is to a state government there is no more telling barometer than their fireworks laws.

Love It Or Leave It

Well, I finally snapped.

After months, nay, years of grousing about Central New York's abysmal condition I finally realized that it's pointless to stay here. Over the weekend I and my significant other came to the decision that it's time to cut our losses and get out of New York. Monday we'll start the process of moving to Texas, just outside Austin.

A lot of things influenced our final decision, but the most telling was the increasing dysfunction of both our local and state politics. Put simply, our political class is totally devoid of even the most rudimentary leadership ability. The consistent refusal to control tax growth, even as the area undergoes a population loss of almost biblical proportions, means the increasingly small population here will be burdened with higher and higher costs. That feedback loop, unchecked, will produce a death spiral of ever shrinking populations and ever escalating taxation.

Actually, I shouldn't say "will". It has. The death spiral is already here. After talking with some friends with a much better grasp of demographics than I have, since thier livlihoods depend on it, I think the upcoming census is going to find that the area's population loss has accelerated to around five percent a year. Worse, the ones leaving are the most capable of driving long-term growth in the economy- the young, skilled professionals, and high value workers.

If I find the time to post any more I'll probably discuss why leaving New York is so attractive (and probably the right choice for most people reading this). If I don't find the time I just want to thank everyone that appreciated my scribblings. It was fun.

-Z