Hopes of seeing the Niagara Falls International Airport revitalized and operational any time soon received a serious blow last week when county Industrial Development Agency Executive Director John Simon and former IDA board chairwoman Shirley Hamilton were pushed out of their positions.
Simon and Hamilton were instrumental in forming the Niagara Airport Development Corp., an IDA subsidiary made up of private investors and nationally recognized airport developers hoping to revitalize the moribund facility.
The plan was vehemently opposed by Niagara USA Chamber CEO Bobby Newman and Niagara Gazette Publisher Steve Braver, both of whom are members of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, an organization dedicated to the interests of a small clique of Buffalo business people.
Newman's family owns NOCO Energy, which makes a fortune with its jet fuel sales monopoly at the Buffalo airport. Jet fuel prices in Buffalo are among the highest in the country, and the last thing Newman wants to see is competition from Niagara Falls.
Efforts to derail the plan to reopen our airport began with scathing editorials in the Gazette and a push to give Newman a seat on the IDA board. As an Erie County resident, his appointment would have been illegal under state law, but that didn't stop Legislator Bradley Erck from trying to push it through.
When that failed, Erck, a Democrat, sided with the Republican majority to remove Shirley Hamilton and replace her with Kevin Schuler of Newfane, who is the Buffalo Niagara Partnership's government affairs director.
Make no mistake. The Buffalo interests now have control of your daily newspaper and your Chamber of Commerce. Shortly they will add the IDA and the newly created Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. to their list of Niagara County holdings.
The not-so-hidden agenda of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership is to make its elite, mostly male and mostly white members even richer than they already are. They're anti-union, anti-government and anti-Niagara Falls. Newman has admitted sending business prospects who have approached the Niagara Chamber to Buffalo's economic development agency rather than our IDA.
You don't see these same people agitating to change the name of the football team to the Buffalo Niagara Bills. For them, "regionalism" is a one-way street, heading strictly south.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 1 2003 |