By Mark Scott
Buffalo, NY – Erie County Executive Joel Giambra focused more on his vision for the future than on the county's fiscal problems during his annual State of the County address Thursday. Giambra received polite applause from the 700 people who attended the Rotary Club of Buffalo luncheon at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center.
"My name is Joel Giambra. And I'm asking you to trust me."
Giambra is trying to rebuild his image in the wake of last year's disastrous budget crisis. In his address Thursday, he made scant reference to it, saying only that the county ended 2005 with a balanced budget.
"We cut about $80 million in spending," Giambra said. "But the roads are still being plowed. The parks are open. And we still have access to the credit markets on Wall Street."
Giambra said perhaps he was not "radical enough" in putting together his four-year fiscal recovery plan. He said there is too much government in Erie County. Giambra said the county was on track in the 1950s and '60s in moving toward a regional government. But then, he said, "we got off track."
"By 2000, we had sprawl, not growth," Giambra said. "The political class of all political parties got hold of our progress and strangled us so that they can hold on.
"We're all paying for all the leftover governments. We are still paying for 341 elected officials. Friends, I submit to you today that we simply don't need that many."
Among those listening to Giambra's speech Thursday was the new supervisor of the town of Orchard Park, Mary Travers Murphy. The former journalist and now elected leader welcomed Giambra's regional vision.
"Taxpayers are out there demanding that we conduct ourselves more like the private sector does, especially with respect to services that we can share and consolidate," Travers-Murphy said. "I loved that part."
Travers-Murphy said she supports Giambra's call to the area's congressional delegation to come up with the federal funding to tear down the Skyway and expand the light rail transit system.