Revise and extend: Report sees solutions
The lead editorial in today's Buffalo News points with hope to the impending release of the Lundine Report [OK, the New York State Commission on Local Government Efficiency and Competitiveness] as a way of getting the dead weight of multiple layers of local government off the backs of New York 
taxpayers:
"We just don't need all of these towns and villages, school districts and fire districts, health boards and highway commissioners, keepers of vital records and overseers of weights and measures. But making them go away will take more than uncommon acts of political realism across the state."
The original story about the upcoming report -- a Buffalo News/Tom Precious scoop -- is here. A follow-up quoting local government reform crusader Kevin Gaughan as saying, much more politely than this, "So what else is new?" is here. And a link to the prematurely released -- dare we say "leaked"? -- document itself -- with "Confidential" stamped across every page -- is here. [It's OK to read it. You paid for it.]
The report should soon be available in its final and official version on the commission's own Web site, where there is already a lot of background and supporting material to be had.
The story hasn't gotten much play elsewhere. That's what happens sometimes when it is someone else's find. One exception is Rochester's WHAM TV, which builds on the News's story by getting this good quote from Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy on the plethora of local government layers: "If you want to keep them, then don't complain about taxes. ... Just keep digging in your pockets, your checkbooks, every year, writing a bigger one, a bigger one, a bigger one. Don't complain."
The Herald Community newspapers, meanwhile, take note of a couple of government consolidation spurs that were inserted in, and then removed from, the new state budget. They were actions that would have ended salary and benefits for the commissioners of special districts and merged special sanitation districts into their surrounding towns.
--George Pyle/Editorial Writer
