by Allan Uthman

In his State of Erie County Address last week, County Executive Joel Giambra introduced a plan as hilariously entertaining and totally unfeasible as George W. Bush’s manned mission to mars, namely the proposed merger of our city and county governments. Like the Bush/Rove sci-fi mission, Giambra’s plan to create a “Greater Buffalo Regional Government” from scratch is visionary, unprecedented, and a total logistical impossibility. Like the Mars mission, it will serve to distract voters from the pathetically inept and corrupt realities of our executive’s performance, while also providing another huge sinkhole to launder taxpayer dollars in. Giambra’s plan also gave him something to talk about at the Address, saving him from having to deliver his backup speech, entitled “We’re All Going to Hell in a Handbasket.”

Collapsible mayor “Big Tony” Masiello fell right into step with Scarface Joel’s plan, the nonexistent details of which are scheduled to be released approximately never. The mayor doesn’t seem to mind people doing his job for him; what with the Control Board and Giambra, he’ll have caught up with the new season of “The Sopranos” in no time. Masiello’s mush-mouthed delivery perfectly reflects his pushover personality; I think the last time he said ‘no’ to somebody was when the good folks at Duffs asked him if he’d had enough chicken wings.

While downsizing and streamlining our bloated, top-heavy government is indeed an appealing prospect, these jerks have no intention of reducing their back-breaking fiscal burden on Buffalo’s cash-strapped populace. Make no mistake; this is smoke-and-mirrors, pie-in-the-sky, carrot-on-a-stick stuff. If paring down our inflamed system was really the goal here, Giambra would have proposed something that was actually attainable, not some regionalist’s Holy Grail. Let’s start small: how about firing some people? I’m sure there’s at least a few thousand pencil-pushers and paper-shufflers out there who haven’t felt the need to justify their employment for some time now. Or maybe we could eliminate a few patronage positions? Suuure. There’s not a chance in hell that Giambra would really endanger the cushy no-work jobs that he’s doled out to the ‘important’ people in his life. The mere fact that our local media refers to “patronage jobs” without batting an eye should be enough to make us grab our pitchforks and run to City Hall with murder in our hearts, but it’s just another depressing fact of life in our corrupt, rancid carcass of a city.

Let’s just get this straight: Giambra doesn’t give a crap about you, Buffalo. He and Masiello have presided over the demise and immolation of our frigid town, wearing the smug smiles of slumlords who burn their properties for insurance money. For some reason, people still give these guys the benefit of the doubt, and some reactions, in the public and the media, to Joel’s thinly woven fabrication have been positive. It’s not our residents’ fault, really; they’re victims of a grossly under-funded and administration-heavy public school system, attempting to comprehend the gargantuan multi-headed monster of local politics in a virtual media vacuum. It’s a daunting task for even the best-informed, and the very density and opacity of our city’s bureaucracy leaves most of us as stumped and befuddled as Dick Cheney in an ethics class. Our local news media is too busy bringing you late-breaking news about grandmas who knit scarves for our soldiers overseas, or on-the-scene reports from the all-too-aptly named Why Guy at the Fisher-Price daycare center, to present any insightful, or even clumsy coverage of the daily rape and murder of our city’s future.