Like a couple of evil grinches, Buffalo Niagara Partnership CEO Andrew Rudnick and Buffalo Niagara Enterprise CEO Tom Kucharski have stolen Christmas for thousands in Niagara County who hoped that a new clean coal power-generating plant in Somerset would provide the economic shot in the arm needed to turn things around here.
While a state Power Authority vote on the project is scheduled for Tuesday, and Gov. George Pataki is expected to travel to Western New York on Wednesday to make a formal announcement, a number of politicians involved in the deliberations told the Reporter over the weekend that the decision to build the plant in Tonawanda is a done deal.
The plant would have been the largest economic development project ever undertaken in Niagara County, resulting in 1,500 construction jobs lasting seven years, 150 permanent jobs at the plant, and a $1 billion incentive package from the state.
But Kucharski and Rudnick helped undermine the county's efforts to lure the state Power Authority to build the plant here, and their lobbying to have the plant built in Erie County instead has apparently paid off.
"It looks like Erie County got a billion dollar coal-burning power plant and Niagara County got a lump of coal in its stocking," said state Sen. George Maziarz, who lobbied hard for the plant to be located here. "I don't know whether the Partnership's efforts tipped the scales, but they certainly weren't helpful."
In June, the county paid Kucharski's BNE $50,000 to help in attracting new business here. Kucharski demanded the money -- ostensibly to give the county a "seat at the table" on the BNE board of directors -- after deliberately leading the German chemical giant Wacker Chemie away from Niagara County, where it had planned on locating. Wacker executives subsequently abandoned Western New York altogether and built the new plant in Germany.
Foisting the fiction that his organization wasn't at all related to the nearly identically named Buffalo Niagara Partnership, Kucharski declined to formally endorse the Somerset site even after the $50,000 was paid and Rudnick had endorsed the Erie County site on behalf of the Partnership.
Both the BNE and the BNP operate out of the same Buffalo offices, share an accountant, and labor under largely interchangeable boards of directors. Kucharski sits on Rudnick's board, and Rudnick sits on Kucharski's.
Their efforts to have the plant built in Erie County received strong support from another Partnership board member, Warren T. Colville, who runs the Buffalo News. The paper strongly editorialized in favor of the Erie County site despite its recent attempts to promote good will and expand its Niagara County readership.
Following a public outcry and county Legislator Dennis Virtuoso's threat to demand the $50,000 be returned, Rudnick wrote a halfhearted letter to Pataki saying that either of the Erie or Niagara county locations would be acceptable to the Partnership.
This seemed to mollify Republican Legislature Chairman Bill Ross and Republican Majority Leader Malcolm Needler, who pushed the ill-advised payment to Kucharski's organization through in the first place.
Virtuoso said he was angry and disappointed in the outcome.
"We paid these people $50,000, and not only didn't they help us, they actively worked against us here," he said. "I think they ought to return the money they took to the taxpayers of Niagara County and, obviously, I'll be doing everything in my power to make sure they're not retained again when their contract comes up again next year."
Ah, it's Christmas in Niagara. Can't you just feel the love?
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 19 2006 |