Change. Stachowski Style.
by Matt at Apr 5th, 2009
State Senator Bill Stachowski, who was just barely reelected last year, has been having to answer for some questionable actions lately, namely his giving raises to his staffers despite the state budget crisis.
Despite the budget crisis, during which state leaders are angling to pull more money from taxpayers and perhaps lay off thousands of state workers, the Democrats who captured the state Senate have lavished raises on their staffs.
Take Western New York’s two Democratic senators, for example.
Key aides to Sen. William T. Stachowski of Lake View are collecting raises of 40 to 55 percent, while some aides to Sen. Antoine M. Thompson of Buffalo are seeing raises of 20 percent or better. And a couple of Thompson’s aides have doubled their salaries because they reached full-time status.
Senate Democrats argue that they are merely giving staffers “fair” compensation that had previously been denied by the Republican majority, though minority leader Dean Skelos said Democrats are spending more on salaries than Republicans did.
The scandal did force one of Stachowski’s aides to resign.
The pay raises that Democratic senators doled out to their staffs in recent weeks included a bump for Raymond F. Gallagher, who appeared on State Sen. William T. Stachowski’s payroll even though he holds a full-time job elsewhere.
Gallagher, a longtime political hand, also draws a state pension and serves as executive director of a company that, among other things, serves senior citizens through a county government contract.
Gallagher was serving as Stachowski’s part-time “special assistant.”
Until Thursday. That’s when Gallagher resigned from his state job as The Buffalo News inquired about what he does for Stachowski’s office.
Stachowski claimed Gallagher resigned because he couldn’t handle the extra workload, but that seems to contradict the earlier explanation for the raises.
Not only are Democrats like Stachowski giving their staffers questionable raises, they are also still managing to find millions of dollars for pet projects. Donn Esmonde wrote about this last week:
Not only did legislators not cut their own fat, but Stachowski (stachows@senate.state.ny.us) and Thompson (athompso@senate.state.ny.us)—as a perk of Democrats taking over the Senate—siphoned extra money into staff raises. Stachowski defended the upticks as a reward for extra work. Yet even gradeschoolers know that legislators are near-useless appendages, subservient to the “three men in a room”—the governor, Senate leader Smith and Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver—who hold power.
Stachowski reportedly pays $70,000 to a “scheduler” and another $70,000 to a “communications specialist.” Can’t the guy keep his own schedule, or find somebody to write his news releases for less than 70 grand?
Is this the “positive change” Stachowski was supposed to bring for New York and Upstate in particular?
Of course, as Esmonde noted in his column, this isn’t just about Stachowski alone. It’s the Albany culture that is the problem, and Stachowski, a career politician (now enjoying the spoils of victory with majority party power) will always be a part of the problem, not the solution. Democrats rushed passage of the state budget without adequate debate, and now, no one really knows exactly what is in it.
The people of New York have to put party loyalty aside and start electing people who will represent the people. We need to bring balance to the state government.
The call from you to set aside party loyalty is laughable, but if you actually read the piece you link to at my site, I wrote:
Dennis Delano ran an historically awful race and showed that hero cop does not a good candidate or politician make.
Stach didn’t, after all, become chair of the Finance Committee, and he didn’t make any noise about positive change for NY in general, or WNY in particular. This is a shame, but par for the course for just about every and any politician in Albany, including BTW your sainted Tedisco. So, I never said he was _going_ to bring about positive change. I said I _hoped_ he’d bring about positive change. Get your facts straight.
Incidentally, while Donn Esmonde was busy blowing Maziarz, did anyone look into how many people Maziarz has working for him, and how much they cost per year? Of course not, because that would be work.
More laughable is your past claim of not “unthinkingly go along with candidates just because of the “D” at the end of their names,” when your support of Stachowski, in combination with your regular rhetoric against career politicians, totally epitomized party loyalty.
Dennis Delano did run a bad campaign. There were plenty of mistakes made… he was leading in the polls for a while, until Stachowski ran a smear campaign against him.
Ironically, you were critical of Dale Volker for how he attacked Konst… which wasn’t all that different from how Stachowski smeared Delano. You also supported Joe Mesi, who was arguably a poor candidate given his lack of knowledge on the issues… funny how certain qualities in some candidates are unforgivable, but in others is excusable… it just so happens the ones who get a pass from you are all in your party. At least admit that. To deny it would be intellectually dishonest of you.
I didn’t realize that Stachowski had free reign to be ineffective and useless since he didn’t get finance chair. Do you use the same excuse for Republicans who aren’t in leadership positions? Give me a break.
Again, it is time to be honest with yourself. That may be a bit tricky for a lawyer, but you might find the experience cathartic.
1. I ran against Ranzenhofer. Why would I vote to give him a promotion? He was as ineffective a county legislator as Stachowski is a state legislator. Of course I went with Mesi.
2. Dennis Delano refused to speak with the press, refused to debate Stachowski, and refused even to be interviewed for the Buffalo News’ endorsement process. Why on earth should someone elect a candidate who can’t answer questions posed to him by voters, the media, or his opponent. Given what a longtime hack Stachowski is, it should have been easy pickings. It took special effort for Delano to blow his lead. Nice work there.
3. I am a registered Democrat, and lean Democratic but am essentially a centrist. I know you don’t comment on my site, but evidently you read it, so you’re aware that many of the views that I hold are not dissimilar from any typical Republican’s. One of the most important and biggest endorsements I ever made on my site was to elect Kevin Helfer mayor of Buffalo in 2005. Feel free to look it up. I’ve also taken sides occasionally in Republican races, picking DiPietro over Volker. Volker - incidentally, who has been in the State Senate since probably before you were born, and has nothing at all to show for it. Volker, incidentally, who - when he was in the majority last year - had a staff with an annual budget of $1 million.
Where, Matt, was your indignant outrage over Volker’s $1 million staff? Or is your outrage reserved only for Democratic malfeasance?
Because over at my site, where all I do is supposedly lick Democrats’ taints, I commented on the Stachowski staffer issue yesterday. I also criticized the spending in the state budget, and of the budget deal struck by Silver, Paterson, and Smith, I posted disapprovingly of it and commented that the budget was “as broken as the process that shat it out.”
That budget news came out just a few days after the anti-Albany tea party that you attended. The only thing you’ve posted about despite all the horrific news coming out of Albany is one thing with Stack’s staff that is, in the end, the same stuff your Volker’s been up to for ages.
So, that’s several posts just in the past few days where I have specifically disagreed and criticized something that my party is responsible for. Yet you posted three items in the past 7 days, one of which was Tea Party, one of which was Tedisco (who is equally hacky and wasteful a spender as Stackowski, Volker, or Silver, yet you supported willingly and enthusiastically), and now this. Apart from critiquing Delano’s campaign, I have yet to see you express disagreement with a Republican on much anything substantive.
If you’re gonna lecture anyone on being a party hack, it’d be helpful not to be such a party hack.
“It’s the Albany culture that is the problem, and Stachowski, a career politician will always be a part of the problem, not the solution”
Of course, when I made this same point about Tedisco last week, you and Ali told me I was being partisan. You see, the system itself is corrupt and illegitimate. Promoting someone from the system to another position of power is just plain dumb.
Have you read the Brennan Center report? I think it’s interesting that you point out that “Democrats rushed passage of the state budget without adequate debate”, when the better point is that we haven’t had honest and open debate on the budget in nearly forty years, regardless as to who is in power. Up until last year, Republicans controlled two of the three men in a room and no significant reform happened during that time period. Nor will it happen now, because they would rather have the citizenry haggle over the minuscule differences between New York Republicans and Democrats than agree and demand a slate of transparency and legislative reforms.
Making this a partisan argument does it a disservice, I think we can all agree that the system is incredibly broken here and both parties are equally responsible. Until we agree on that, no progress can be made.
Well, I write a post praising a Democrat for risking his member items, if not his very political career, by directly taking on the likes of Tedisco’s Democratic doppelganger, Sheldon Silver, yet I’m to be lectured about partisan hackery.