Nickel City Nonsense
Dunkirk NY – Buffalo is really a pleasant city in a lot of ways. The summers are very pleasant, the city is relatively safe, it is very inexpensive to live there, and the arts community is alive and active. It has a strong work ethic, it’s very blue-collar at its core, and the residents are quite friendly for the most part.
But it is also a city with a history of corruption and cronyism. City government is a morasse of incompetency and favoritism, not to mention nepotism. Political loyalty and patronage rule the public service sector. In just about every city department you will find some level of corruption, great or small. And finally, although not surprisingly, it has hit the arts community.
Most of the story is in this article from the Buffalo News. You can follow some of the links in the comments section at the end of the article to get earlier news stories on this issue. In a nutshell, the former Executive Director of the Arts Council for Buffalo and Erie County plead guilty this past January to stealing $25,000 from the Arts Council accounts. Now, it seems, another $48,000 has gone missing, according to the Arts Council Board President. That money was the bulk of a New York State Arts Council grant designed to support arts groups around Western NY. According to a former staffer at the Arts Council of Bufalo, the group is about $300,000 in debt. As a result, it appears that by the end of the year there will be no Arts Council for Buffalo and Erie County in existence.
It’s just sad, that’s all. Many small arts groups in the city and in Erie County will suffer. I can only shake my head in disbelief and despair when I read stories like this. Buffalo is a city with so much potential, and for this to happen only means it will get another regional and national black eye. You expect corruption in the city’s public sector departments, and in the local labor unions. But in Buffalo, the sad truth is that even the arts groups are corrupt. If this keeps up, the arts in Bufalo won’t be worth a plug nickel. -twl
