"Buffalo Interests Seek to Derail Airport Proposal"

Thursday, April 3, 2003

BUFFALO INTERESTS SEEK TO DERAIL AIRPORT PROPOSAL
Niagara Falls (NY) Reporter


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, ³regionalism² is a one-way
street, heading strictly south.


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