Buffalo News (New York), October 2, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 The Buffalo News
Buffalo News (New York)

October 2, 2005 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

SECTION: FIRST SUNDAY; Pg. M7

HEADLINE: How turf wars are turning us all into losers;
And what to do about it

SERIES: Why Not Buffalo?

BYLINE: By SANDRA TAN

BODY:
Collaboration. It sounds so good.
Several years back, city and county police agencies tried to pool their resources. They talked about better protecting the public by beefing up drug investigations and combining emergency response teams.
But political mistrust, long-standing rivalries and a lack of respect for the collaborative process killed the effort. In the end, an ineffective, expensive system lingered until the city and county budget crises left everything even worse off than before.
"There's a complete, total lack of trust," says Lt. Robert Meegan Jr., president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association. "It was a bad situation from the beginning."
Too often, that's how things go around here.
Western New York is a breeding ground for turf wars. Some battles go back decades.
It doesn't just happen here, of course. Take any aging metropolitan region with shrinking resources, failed leadership and a jaded public, and voila! The human instinct of self-defense has folks putting up the barbed wire.
But if anyone has perfected this self-defeating process, it's us.
Turf is a state of mind. It goes: I want to keep what's mine at all costs, no matter how little it is, and no matter who is hurt (even if it's me).
This self-centered mind-set has hurt everything this community holds precious - its economic prosperity, hopes for government reform, health care, crime-fighting efforts, school resources and neighborhood redevelopment plans.
"There isn't the realization that if one goes down, all of us suffer," says Marian Deutschman, president of the League of Women Voters.
The overused pie metaphor resurfaces here, because it so perfectly highlights the problem. Everyone rushes to claim a piece of the pie. And when the pie starts shrinking, folks struggle harder to keep their own thinning slice, even as they collectively starve. It doesn't have to be that way.
This region may have some of the worst examples of turf fighting, but it also has some of the best models of cooperation and collaboration. They're part of this story, too.
"No institution in town has enough money, muscle, influence or power to create the future this region deserves," says Arlene Kaukus, president of the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County, "but collectively, we have incredible capacity."
Finding that capacity means turning the pie cliche inside out.
Call it the Bigger Pie Doctrine. It's 10 guidelines developed by successful people who have set turf issues aside to bake a bigger pie that feeds everyone. Read about it in detail on Page 10.
The Bigger Pie Doctrine is both easy to understand and doable. But given our long history of turf fallout, we need to take the time to revisit our mistakes and recognize the scope of the problem that led us here.
> How We Got Here
Concede this: Buffalo is an old town lacking in new blood, with outdated political boundaries, outdated layers of government, and undying neighborhood and ethnic loyalties.
Unlike many younger, consensus-driven cities, Western New Yorkers participate in a self-centered, individualistic political culture that demands to know, "What's in it for me?" says Kate Foster, director of the Institute for Local Goverance and Regional Growth.
Couple this with a deteriorating local economy, and it's easy to see how the turf mind-set takes off.
This position manifests itself most prominently in the public sector, because that's where all the jobs are. Even now, government remains far and away Western New York's biggest employer.
"You're in a community that doesn't have a lot of alternative employment options, so you see people fight like hell for what they have," says Michael Clarke, head of the Buffalo branch of the Local Initiative Support Corporation, a nonprofit agency that promotes community development.
This region's problems are exacerbated by the fact that it lacks strong leadership willing to do the hard work necessary to move a community beyond its turf mentality.
When U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins made the waterfront his top priority and began getting some credit for progress, he says, other politicians got annoyed. They refused to pick up the waterfront agenda, because they didn't want to share the issue with him.
"It's not my issue," says a frustrated Higgins. "It's everybody's issue. All this stuff about the waterfront, these aren't my ideas. These are ideas that have been in master plans for the past 40 years."
Turf battles have colored virtually every aspect of community life in Western New York. Here are half a dozen or so to consider.
Let's see how they stack up against the Bigger Pie Doctrine. (Notes appear throughout this article referring readers to the relevant guidelines on Page 10.)
> Economic Development
Local officials talk a good game when it comes to economic develop-ment. They espouse a regional approach to attracting new investment. But too often, that philosophy gets tossed the moment anyone is asked to make sacrifices. That's particularly true when it requires city-suburb cooperation.
Former University at Buffalo Provost Elizabeth Capaldi remembers when the Buffalo Life Sciences Complex was taking off a few years ago.
This complex is the newest part of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, a consortium with a billion-dollar economic impact. Crucial to the new complex is bioinformatics research, which uses supercomputers to crunch genetic data.
UB had to run cable down from its Amherst campus to the Life Sciences Complex in Buffalo to give the complex access to its supercomputer.
"The city wanted to know what they got out of it," Capaldi recalls.
It took a year of negotia-tions to get permission to run the line onto city property without charge, she says. (See Bigger Pie No. 6)
On a larger scale, you have the region's industrial development agencies. There's one that represents the entire county, then five others representing individual towns.
This setup is baffling to outside developers and has led to court lawsuits from downtown developers who claim city businesses are being stolen by the suburbs.
Nevertheless, suburbs seeing the greatest amount of development want to maintain control over their own destiny.
"An IDA's purpose is to promote development, not to regulate it," says Amherst IDA President James Allen. "You could call that turf battles ... but we call that philosophy."
The good news is some collaboration is occurring.
All of the county's industrial development agencies have adopted common eligibility policies, and to prevent future lawsuits, all the municipal IDAs have agreed to let the Erie County IDA decide if any city-based business should get tax incentives for moving to the suburbs.
Finally, there's the failure of regional tourism.
Erie and Niagara counties have different assets. Erie County has its theaters, museums, architecture and sporting events. Niagara County has the falls, one of the World Wonders, and other natural assets. They share the Niagara River.
"You're not competing," says David Rosenwasser, president of the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. "This would grow the pie. It doesn't make the pieces smaller."
It makes sense for all sides to agree on the goal - that thriving regional tourism helps everyone. It's an incentive to work together. (See Bigger Pie No. 3)
Instead, however, both Erie and Niagara counties put out separate visitors guides, instead of collaborating on a single, comprehensive one. They run their own sports fishing programs instead of working together to become a national fishing destination.
"We've discussed this topic two or three times," Rosenwasser says, "and there always seems to be some hurdle that has to be overcome. There is this overarching provincial, parochial thinking that seems to touch everything."
These choices carry consequences when the tourism budgets of both counties continue to shrink. Erie County, for instance, lost its bid for the 2006 Citgo Bassmaster fishing tour - a half-million dollar money generator - because it couldn't afford the $30,000 bid fee.
> Hospitals
It's not just public agencies and government that have trouble getting past the turf mind-set.
One of the community's most damaging examples of turf wars involves local hospitals. These turf battles don't just cost taxpayers money. They harm the community's ability to treat the sick.
This region has too many hospitals and not enough patients. Local health care systems spend more money than they generate just trying to keep their hospital doors open. Those costs prevent hospitals from attracting the best doctors and nurses, from buying better diagnostic and lifesaving equipment.
Area health systems compensate for this by trying to steal patients from each other, duplicating programs, and luring away doctors as the overall market continues to shrink.
"Hospitals are doing procedures where they know they'll never have enough patients to ever be good at them," says Bruce Boissonnault, president of the Niagara Health Quality Coalition.
Carotid artery surgery is one example. It removes blockages from arteries carrying blood from the heart to the brain. Medical literature recommends hospitals perform at least 50 of these surgeries a year.
In Western New York, however, only six hospitals did more than 50 last year. Fifteen did fewer than 50, and four hospitals did fewer than five, according to the New York State Hospital Report Card.
Michael W. Cropp, chief executive of Independent Health, contrasted Western New York's system to Providence, R.I., where he previously worked as a physician. In Providence, one health system did all the major heart surgery. Another hospital performed all high-end obstetrics.
By making strategic sacrifices and targeting their resources in areas where they excel, they grew the pie - the hospital market - instead of carving up a shrinking one. (See No. 6 again)
"We should all be on the same page in terms of what are the standards of care people should expect," Cropp says, "and who is best able to meet those standards."
> Housing and Human Services
Those same kinds of conversations are sorely needed among the city's housing and human services agencies, which have misspent tens of millions of dollars in block grant money over the past three decades.
City Strategic Planning Director Timothy Wanamaker pointed out that in just the past two years, the city had awarded $928,000 to a few housing development agencies that pledged to rehabilitate 25 city properties.
In the end, these agencies finished only six.
Similarly poor records can be found among the city's other neighborhood organizations. Yet each of these agencies and their representatives on the Common Council have fought ferociously to keep money flowing to "their own" neighborhood agency.
"Every year, the resources get smaller," says Clarke, head of the LISC community development organization. "Folks have been going out of business because the funding isn't there, but the turf still is."
The city recently adopted uniform housing-agency criteria and consolidated rehabilitation loan programs and homeowner training. Both have led to huge savings and better service. The city, for the first time, has also completed performance standards for all the human services organizations it funds.
This accountability has a political price. Wanamaker was threatened with "a war in the streets" if underperforming community groups lost funding. His popularity with the Common Council is in the tank.
But change requires risk.
> School Districts
Streamlining government is one of the most difficult challenges this community faces. For some county residents, there's no more obvious example than our local school districts. Erie County has 29 of them.
Multiple school districts are partially responsible for population flight from the city to suburbs; parents shop for homes in districts with better test scores.
"There's a better way to run the ship," says Robert Bennett, chancellor with the Board of Regents. "How many districts do we need to have every student meet education standards? That's the only question."
Many others say the same. But studies indicate many district mergers won't save money because they ultimately incur higher administrative, fringe benefit and transportation costs.
Most school districts have given up on outright mergers in favor of stronger collaboration. Superintendent James Mazgajewski of the Cheektowaga-Sloan School District - one of the town's four main school districts - noted that his district already shares staff, transportation, training, purchasing and food-service responsibilities with other districts.
"We have had superb cooperation," Mazgajewski says. "Are there going to be turf battles? Yeah, we're competitive, but that's one of the things people want us to be."
Academic competition, however, doesn't serve the needs of many city school students who find themselves losing out to their wealthier suburban peers. No one can figure out how to include poorer districts in the collaboration process. (See No. 4)
The Buffalo Public Schools have instead relied on limited partnerships with charities and government agencies. One program, Close the Gap, targeted six struggling city schools starting in 2003.
Of the six, five were placed on the New York State list of most-improved schools, says the United Way's President Kaukus. Close the Gap provided assistance to fewer than a tenth of all the schools the district serves, but it's a model of collaboration that works.
> Labor vs. Management
The blame game is easy to play, but nobody ever wins it.
Government administrators often accuse unions of stifling reform. Union officials, in turn, accuse government leaders of disregarding the needs of hard-working men and women.
"Yeah, we want ours and they want theirs," says Joan Bender, president of CSEA Local 815, county government's largest union. "That's the way it's always been and the way it's always going to be."
This presupposes that unions and management don't want the same things. But that's not true. Both want a stable, financially secure workplace that doesn't float from crisis to crisis.
Lou Jean Fleron, director of Economic Development Initiatives for the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, based in Buffalo, referred to its Champions at Work study.
It cited examples of how union and management at local businesses worked together to save their companies millions of dollars.
Millions.
This kind of relationship, however, is virtually non-existent in the public sector, Fleron says.
Local government administrators resent their employees for soaking up taxpayer revenue and receiving rich benefits. Union members see little reason to assist in reform efforts, because they're never rewarded for their participation.
"There's been very little willingness to share information, to involve unions as part of the change process, and that's because of this blame game," Fleron says. "It's a lot easier to say it's the other guy's fault instead of all sharing in the responsibility." (See Nos. 5, 6 and 7)
> Public Safety
Good relationships among leaders can make almost any collaboration work. Bad ones can make even the best collaborative concept fail.
One example of the latter involves those merger discussions between the Erie County Sheriff's Department and Buffalo Police mentioned at the beginning of this article.
Starting in late 2000, the city and county began discussing ways to collaborate in certain areas, particularly in specialized departments like SWAT and narcotics.
They discussed supporting new asset forfeiture laws that would have returned a greater percentage of seized drug money to the community for mutual law enforcement purposes, including crime prevention programs, says Undersheriff Richard Donovan, then chief deputy.
Both sides even used a consultant, a former Rochester police chief, to help bring them together.
Collaboration could have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars, brought in more money and strengthened investigation and emergency response.
But it never happened. The effort was doomed by political conflicts and a lack of respect for those involved in the collaboration process. (See Nos. 7, 8 and 10)
Then the city and county budget crises hit.
Special investigation units for both departments lost officers. Both agencies slashed narcotics units, even though drugs account for most of the region's crimes and homicides.
Some public safety collaboration is occurring on smaller levels.
Erie County Emergency Services Commissioner Michael Walters pointed to the county's 911 emergency call centers. The county has 26, spread out among municipalities, all performing the same tasks.
"It's cumbersome and expensive," he says.
By early next year, five of these call centers - including the ones used by the city and the sheriff's department - will be consolidated in the new county-run Public Safety Center.
If all goes well, Walters says, maybe other municipal call centers will join in.
> Old Boys' Club
Clearly, this region has too many layers of government. But when it comes down to the real players in this community, their numbers are actually rather small. And over time, these big fish have developed a proprietary sense of guardianship and agenda-setting when it comes to this region.
Sometimes this is a benefit. Sometimes it isn't.
Anyone following local policy development can easily name people - often business people - of influence. They belong to groups such as the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, Group of 18 and 43x79.
The yea-or-nay stamp of the business elite, however, has left some outsiders with the perception that this region is run like a country club.
"There's no doubt in my mind that this town is a closed shop, invite only," says James Kane, regional director for the Ambassador Niagara Signature Bridge Group, a private company interested in building its own bridge between Buffalo and Canada.
It's no surprise this perception is most commonly shared by independent business people with outside wealth or company money.
The most high-profile example of this is Tom Golisano, the Rochester businessman and gubernatorial hopeful who put in a bid to buy the Buffalo Sabres. Instead of being welcomed, Golisano got the cold shoulder from local leaders who publicly questioned his motives. (See No. 2 and 9)
Suspicions lingered despite Golisano's long record of entrepreneurship, civic responsibility and philanthropy.
"Yes, it was rough in the beginning," Golisano says. "Everybody knows it. When everybody realized how serious I was, everything turned around. I don't hold animosity, except maybe in a couple directions."
That may be an understatement. Though Golisano says he's been warmly embraced by the Buffalo establishment since he bought the Sabres, he still carries some hard feelings years later. In an interview for this story, he bitterly recounted Buffalo News editorials that lobbied against his bid. (The News has run some glowing editorials about him since then.)
It didn't help that Golisano's bid opposed one by Mark Hamister, a businessman with strong, local political ties.
"It can't be a surprise that we were put in an awkward situation," says Buffalo Niagara Partnership President Andrew Rudnick. "Hamister was chairman of the board of the Partnership. Everyone had rallied around Hamister's bid."
Some compared the welcome Golisano received with the shabby way the Rigas family was initially treated. With the Rigas empire in ruins, some say their suspicions were justified.
That's easy in hindsight. Had Golisano not been forgiving, Western New York might no longer be a hockey town.
> Models That Work
So yes, this community has serious turf issues, and it has hurt us in very real ways. But this community also has some inspirational cases of how turf battles were set aside for the greater good.
> The Foresight of Foundations
Leading the pack are this region's foundations and charities.
When the county budget crisis hit and abolished funding for many cultural and human services agencies, the foundations banded together. They gathered and started trading information.
"It wasn't one person dictating," says Gail Johnstone, president of the Community Foundation. "It was everybody sharing knowledge and defining the problem. We knew what each of us could bring to the table, and most of us realized we couldn't do it alone." (See No. 3 and 4)
Eight foundations pooled their money and handed out $621,094 in grants to help local cultural and community groups wean themselves off of county funding.
"This is honestly unprecedented," Johnstone says.
Foundations and groups such as the United Way have encouraged collaboration among the organizations they fund, as well. For years, they required grant applicants to indicate whether they've partnered with other organizations.
They used their power of the purse strings to encourage groups to leave turf behind. (See No. 9)
> Sharing the Stage
Collaboration has become a big watch word among many cultural organizations.
This year alone, MusicalFare Theatre worked closely with Studio Arena to put on "Zooma Zooma: The Essence of Louis Prima." MusicalFare produced the work, Studio Arena staged it, and Shea's Performing Arts Center marketed and booked it.
The CEPA Gallery now shares staff, office space and administrative support with Big Orbit Gallery, saving both groups about $40,000 a year.
These organizations have realized that in this shrinking-pie economy, collaboration means survival.
> The Ties That Bind
Another shining model of collaboration is the city's Buffalo Niagara Life Sciences Complex.
The newest part of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, the three-building complex is a testament to the vision of three partnering institutions: the University at Buffalo, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute.
Hauptman-Woodward CEO George T. DeTitta says it all started with friendship and trust among the leaders of the three organizations. (See No. 2)
"We like each other, and we've worked together for a very long time," DeTitta says. "We've also understood for a long, long time that we accomplish more together than separately.
"We were three organizations, each of them very different in size. We needed different things. We knew that only by working together were we going to get (the State Legislature) and the governor to agree to this."
The complex has already drawn $17 million from the National Institutes of Health that it wouldn't have gotten if first-class facilities hadn't been built, he says.
> Moving Forward
All these examples prove it's possible to break the turf wars mentality that grips this region. Local leadership can take these lessons to heart and do better tomorrow.
There's going to be some self-defense practiced," says Dianne Bennett, former managing partner with Hodgson Russ law firm. "Who's going to rise above it?"
In a time of crisis - which is where we are right now - people are forced to make hard choices. But if this current crisis makes it easier for everyone to see the larger goals they share as a community, that's a step in the right direction.
Already, we have plans in the pot, like the Framework for Regional Growth on the county level and the Queen City Hub plan on the city level - both road maps that can guide our future priorities and investments as a community.
We don't have to be ruled by fear.
Moving from turf battles to collaboration is not a matter of laws, regulations or bureaucracies.
It's a matter of will.
"There's absolutely nothing that's keeping us from collaborating all over the city on everything," DeTitta says. "If people were to take a breath and say, 'Let's not let egos get in the way,' there are great things we could accomplish. Show no fear."
News staff reporter Sandra Tan was co-author of the Why Not Buffalo? story on the region's need for a strong downtown.

GRAPHIC: Illustration by Daniel Zakroczemski/Buffalo News File Photo Encore: The successful "Zooma Zooma" shows collaboration can expand the shrinking pie.