Going. Going. Gaughan!

I have long supported the efforts of Kevin Gaughan, the political activist hell-bent on streamlining Western New York governments.

Gaughan can legitimately claim being at least partly responsible for the reduction of members in two county governments, and six towns, as well as the elimination of a village.

And now Gaughan has set his eyes on Albany, wishing to reduce the state Senate, followed by the Assembly. His plan is to make 62 senators into 50 and 150 assemblymen into 125.

He says the reduction in the Senate, alone, will save $12 million a year. In a time when we’re all looking for two nickels to rub together, $12 million is a whole lot of rubbing.

Gaughan even has the theoretical support of state Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, who told him he has concerns, but generally is supportive of the plan.

I had my own concerns — particularly the diluting of the people’s voice in Albany with each state senator serving as many as 400,000 people under Gaughan’s plan. Right now, each senator has 322,000 constituents.

So Monday morning, I set out to put those concerns to rest with a phone call to Gaughan, himself.

“First of all, your question assumes that people have a voice in New York government,” he told me. “Virtually every New Yorker knows that the representative has no voice in government.”

“The fundamental purpose to reduce the number of politicians is to increase people’s voice,” Gaughan said, adding that when the real decisions get made, the state goes back to its tried-and-true method of “three men in a room.”

OK, he kind of got me there.

In addition, he said, bigger is not necessarily better. In lean times private companies roll back the number of employees they have to make ends meet. “Government should undergo the same change.”

Plus, Gaughan said, New York has one of the largest state governments in the union. And the cost of running that government is unmatched by even the largest of states.

“I think having two bodies with 212 members … I think there was a time when New York state could afford that,” he said. And that time is long gone.

“To ask people to have the highest cost for the New York State Legislature and have the least voice, calls for a change,” he said.

Gaughan continued, saying that real reform will require term limits, campaign finance reform and redistricting reform, which will prevent the legislators from gerrymandering their districts to ensure the 99 percent re-election rate they have enjoyed for years.

“Each of those reforms have been talked about and yearned for, for over 50 years,” he said. And while he certainly supports those three measures, his baby has been government reduction, which he says is equally important, but still just a part of the solution.

“To solve this problem, nothing's going to work ... but everything might,” he said.

Kevin and I were on the phone no more than five minutes. At the end of that five minutes, I agreed wholeheartedly. And I wish him the best.

Money problems? Cap your own spending!

As I write this, the state Assembly and Senate have been called back to Albany for a special session to try to trim $1 Billion from the state budget ... in an effort to bring our budget deficit down to $5 Billion.

Make sure you read that right. They're trying to bring our deficit down to $5 Billion ... not the budget itself. The budget itself will still be in the $120 Billion area.

And senators and assemblymen from Nassau to Niagara have been sending mailers to their constituents telling them how much they care about their pocket books. So much that they're proposing a tax cap. No, not on their own spending. They want to cap what your local school board spends.

So a group of politicians who are writing in red ink want to dictate what a duly elected school board they have no control over can spend. And they think they're doing you some favor.

No doubt, school districts spend too much money, hire too many people, and create too many new programs. But that's not for my state senator or assemblyman to decide. They've got their own budget snafus to worry about.

State government has a way of creating problems, then asking other people to fix them.

They did this with health care facilitiess, doling out handfuls of cash to every hospital in their district, then complaining that the state was spending too much on hospitals. So they created a committee (the Berger Commission) to then dictate to these privately-run hospitals whether they should remain as-is, close, or merge with a competing privately-run hospital. The simple truth is had they not given money to the hospitals in the first place, the market would have dictated which hospitals would remain open.

Now they're doing it with schools, passing rules and requirements for school aptitude, testing, building requirements, special education, etc. But at the same time, they're complaining that those schools spend too much money. Is there any possibility that the reason those schools spend soo much money is because the state GIVES them money ... with strings attached?

I've been to enough school board meeting to know that the answer is 'yes.' School districts apply for grants or are simply offered cash from Albany, but have to spend "X" amount of local dollars to get that money. And then the school board tells the local taxpayers, "We're only paying 'X.' Albany is paying the rest."

If Albany would stay out of everyone else's business and concentrate on their own problems (I remind you again, we're $6 Billion in the whole), maybe they could actually accomplish something.

Taxpayers, if you want to curtail spending at your school district, run for school board and do it yourself. If you want your state senator or assemblyman to curtail spending at your local school district, you've been duped into believing a) that (s)he cares ... b) that (s)he wasn't the problem in the first place and c) that the state doesn't have it's own problems to worry about.

If they're so good at handling money, how'd they get a $6 billion budget deficit in the first place?