Members of the Niagara Power Coalition now know what it's like to be the heroine in a typical country song.
They've been duped.
They've been cheated.
Heck, they've been downright manipulated.
That's the story coalition members were telling last week as they began to distance themselves from former executive director Mark Zito and the FBI investigators who are following him around these days.
They accused their former leader of withholding copies of a consultant's report that says communities in Niagara County deserve more than $4 billion in compensation from the New York Power Authority.
They said Zito downplayed the report's importance and told them it wasn't relevant to ongoing settlement talks. Some coalition members even went so far as to say Zito and his Republican-connected lobbying group, Mercury Public Affairs, coerced them into thinking that $1 billion was the best they could get.
They were victimized by Zito.
At least that's what they'd have us believe.
I suppose it's possible. Zito formed the coalition. He's been at the forefront of relicensing for years. There's no doubt he exercised tremendous influence over the organization.
Maybe Zito did pull a fast one on the mayors, supervisors, legislators, school superintendents and school district business managers who comprise the coalition's governing board.
If so, should they be excused for allowing him to do it?
Zito was the group's executive director. He wasn't coalition king.
He offered advice. Coalition members didn't have to take it.
To hear the supposedly misled tell it today, Zito controlled not only the books, but the entire organization.
They say they had so little control over Zito that they couldn't even force him to turn over a 65-page socioeconomic report that they paid for themselves.
The report, compiled by FMY Associates of California, examined the impact of the Robert Moses Power Project on communities in the western half of Niagara County. It explains in great detail the reasons why those communities deserve compensation from the authority. It should have been a key topic of discussion at the bargaining table.
Some coalition members claim they never saw it. Others expressed shock last week after "discovering" what it said. I find this curious because I happen to have a copy of the report myself. It's been sitting in a box in my closet for months. Zito gave it to me in the spring of 2004.
I asked him for one and he gave it to me, just like that. I didn't even have to fill out a freedom of information request. A day or so later, I wrote a story about the findings of the report for The Other Paper. Zito was quoted extensively throughout the piece, which suggests that he wasn't all that concerned about keeping a lid on it, at least not at that time.
This is not startling new information, as some might suggest. It was the focus of a story that appeared on the front page of the local daily nearly two years ago.
Besides, is there really any excuse for coalition members failing to find out what it is their own paid consultant had to say about the potential size of the deal they were negotiating?
Zito was less and less interested in discussing the report as the coalition got closer and closer to reaching a settlement. He had his reasons. They even had some validity to them.
As Zito pointed out, the Power Authority had reports, too -- dozens of them that countered pretty much everything the coalition's consultant had to say.
While the coalition's report suggests that the power plant had an adverse impact on the economy in western Niagara County, reality tells us that places like the town and village of Lewiston are, in fact, among the more affluent communities in the area, despite the authority's presence.
Four billion dollars is a lot to ask, even from the New York Power Authority. Honoring such a request meant an increase in electricity rates. Get too greedy and the authority would pull the deal it already had on the table.
Zito knew this. He conveyed this information to me and, most assuredly, to members of the coalition itself.
Was it coercion? Yes, at the hands of the authority, with Zito as its messenger.
I find it hard to believe coalition members didn't recognize the situation for what it was.
I'm not excusing Zito's behavior. If coalition audits are to be believed, he certainly wasn't the best steward of the organization's books. That's not the issue.
The issue is the purpose for forming the coalition in the first place.
The issue is settlement and why the people appointed to the coalition board agreed to one that they now appear to be less than comfortable with.
In the weeks and months before the settlement was announced, the majority of coalition members seemed completely at ease with Zito's leadership, the direction of the organization and the status of settlement talks.
In the days following the announcement of the mega-deal, they were outright nauseating in their effusive praise of Zito's performance during relicensing. They gleefully parroted the $1 billion figure, even though that number includes a half-century's worth of inflation -- Power Authority records peg the agreement's "net present value" at $182 million.
Today, coalition members sound as if they didn't know what Zito was really doing and weren't entirely satisfied with his performance.
Until now, only one ever stated that point of view publicly.
Town of Lewiston Supervisor Fred Newlin called Zito out on several occasions. He wanted more accountability and he wanted greater benefits for his own community. His colleagues didn't back him up. Instead, they accused him of grandstanding and being selfish.
Evidently, everyone else on the coalition was comfortable with Zito and Mercury Public Affairs and the Power Authority.
They didn't want to make waves.
They didn't want to fight. They were handed a share of $1 billion and they took it. They didn't have to, no matter what Zito had to say.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 11 2006 |