A VERY COMMON COUNCIL

We failed you, Buffalo, and we're sorry. The failure pains us even more because we take our responsibility as a beacon of civic truth so seriously.

In response to the Common Council redistricting issue, we wanted desperately to show that Buffalo was missing the point in its argument over whether to eliminate four, six, or none of its elected leaders. We'd hoped that an unusual BEAST survey would reveal that they were ALL morons, and that the city would do better placing its trust in 13 heads of lettuce than in nine or even seven expensive lawmakers.

But our survey fell short of being comprehensive. As a result, we can only report that many of the city's lawmakers, while perhaps not being unfit for office exactly, might do well to go back to school--and by that we mean junior high school--before embarking upon any more ambitious and divisive reform initiatives.

The Common Council issue reminds us a lot of the upcoming baseball strike. Both sides started out with plenty of options, graudally eliminated all the reasonable solutions, and have by now railroaded each other onto a path leading directly toward the worst possible scenario, one in which both sides really lose. In baseball, a strike will cripple a business that made both sides rich. In Buffalo, the redistricting issue will lead to hideous race problems in a city already full enough with them.

The basic storyline that The Buffalo News and other local media has mainly followed in covering the uproar over a plan to eliminate four council seats--three of which are occupied by black council members--has been that of the black contingent playing the race card on the one hand, and the rest of the civilized world (read: white Buffalo) on the other accusing them of being self-seeking jobholders needlessly inflaming the public.

Most everybody who has made any public pronouncement on the issue has fallen on one side or the other of the Either/Or conception of the story, i.e. either it's racism, or it's a necessary move to reduce municipal spending in a city that's already fired numerous teachers and policemen. Another common Either/Or paradigm: either James Pitts and his followers are cynical hacks bent on saving their jobs at the expense of fiscal sanity and racial unity, or they're responsible representatives fighting to retain power for their people.

Almost no one has been willing to say what seems to obvious here: that all of these things are true. Are the cuts economically necessary? Obviously the city can't afford all of these council members, and obviously it looks extremely bad when six white council members propose eliminating three black seats. At the same time, Pitts is obviously a crudely self-seeking politician, while it is also obviously true that the people he represents are extremely pissed about the black/white ratio being reduced in the Council and would want him to fight it out to the end.

Hell, if we were black, we'd feel the same way. The at-large system in this country was primarily designed to reduce black voting power during the reconstruction, when the black populations in cities were not so high. Now whitey wants to end the system because it "doesn't make sense"--well, that would sound like bullshit to us, too.

All of which leads us to the conclusion that the whole thing is an enormous mess, and that we don't have the slightest idea of what anyone could do to make it all better now. However, we did think to ask one illustrative question. In retaining this or that council member, what, exactly, is being retained? Who are these people we're fighting over? Using a unique scientific method, we decided to find out.

What we did was call each of the council members posing as a Gallup pollster--"Mark Greenberg"--and ask each of them to answer a "spot survey of elected officials" about the upcoming military action in Iraq. We read off a series of statements to each legislator we reached, asking them to respond in one of four ways: "Agree," "Disagree," "Agree Strongly," and "Disagree Strongly."

One of the things you learn after years of working in journalism is that few public officials will ever admit to not knowing something when asked. Politicians, academics, and particularly spoksemen from research think-tanks will seldom pass up the opportunity to make a statement on any issue, even if they have no idea what they're talking about. Even if they should know what they're talking about, and don't, prudent silence is rarely if ever offered.

The first council member we got on the phone was Joe Golombek of the North District. The former teacher with the pocket-protector nerd appearance has a Master's Degree in history from Marquette, but you'd never know it from his poll answers. The first question in each survey was straight. After that, we started in with the curveballs...

We followed that with two straight questions, one about the 1991 Gulf War resolution and another about whether or not Iraq poses a terrorist threat. Then we came to the real test question--to see if Golombek could recognize the difference between Iraqi geography and a shitty white funk band:

After talking to these two, we realized that we had to make the test a little harder. Once we did, we ran into a surprise. When we contacted David Franczyk's office, the Councilman himself wasn't in. However, his assistant, attorney Michael Kuzma, quickly asked if he could answer the poll on Franczyk's behalf. Kuzma has an interesting biography that we will probably elaborate upon at some point, and also happens to be Dick Kern's lawyer; it was a bit surprising to hear him bargaining on the phone.

Kuzma's answers were directly opposite to Bonifacio's. He saw U.S. skullduggery everywhere. He strongly disagreed with our first few questions, then didn't slow down when we tossed him a curve:

Anders Rasmussen is the Prime Minister of Denmark, and there are no negotiations with Iraq going on right now. We pushed on:

Kuzma paused for a very long time. We thought he had us.

The next council member we reached was Marc Coppola. Of all of them (with the possible exception of Richard Fontana; more on him later) he came the closest to passing the test. He was candid and more than once refused to answer a question he didn't know the answer to. In fact, he gave us a great disclaimer at the start of the interview:

We pushed on with the test. As to whether or not the U.S. has a right to invade Iraq, Coppola candidly answered "undecided." And he didn't know anything about any Bedouin territories. As for Jamiroquai:

Fair enough! After that, we moved on to the really hard question; it turns out Coppola's geography is a little shaky:

In between reaching these four, we were in the middle of striking out in our attempts to get most of the rest of the council on the phone. Pitts and Fisher, perhaps wisely, refused to return repeated calls. Gray not only didn't return our call; her secretary flatly told us she would not take our call under any circumstances. Davis was out of town until September 3.

As for Thompson, we screwed up badly: he called back, but unfortunately while we happened to be on the phone. Call waiting forwarded him through to the BEAST answering machine, where we found a somewhat suspicious message from the former track star. No big loss; from what we can tell, Thompson is the sharpest of the



bunch and would have been tough to fool on the phone. A man who studied in Ghana is not likely to think Liechtenstein borders Iraq. You never know, though.

Fontana, meanwhile, took our call. We identified ourselves in this one as actually being from the BEAST and simply tried to get him to comment on a nonexistent news story, asking him about the "upcoming anti-WTO demonstrations in Halifax, Nova Scotia," which of course are not planned at all.

"I don't know anything about that," Fontana said bluntly. A few minutes later, we squirmed out of the call.

The only remaining member to reach was Betty Jean Grant. After repeated phone calls, we finally got her on the phone for the Gallup poll. It took some doing even to get the questions going, however:

We moved on. Grant candidly said she didn't know anything about any Bedouin territories. She sensibly said she thought an act of war should have congressional approval. As for designs upon the oil of the Jamiroquai province, she said, "That's a possibility. That would be 'agree somewhat.'" We added a few more questions:

There is no Ottawa Peace resolution, nor any peace initiative being offered. We moved on:

Nice sentiment, except that Burkina Faso is in Africa. God help us all.