Senecas offer Spitzer rough road; Ackley authors his final column

BRIAN ACKLEY

Political Columnist If Eliot Spitzer thinks it's been a tough road, pun intended, with the Seneca Nation of Indians, he might be in for a whole lot of you ain't seen nothing yet.

No doubt that newly elected nation President Maurice John speaks for plenty of his constituents in ratcheting up the rhetoric with New York State in recent weeks. But in some respects, it's personal as well.

John, you see, was one of the very first Senecas to start selling tax-free gas and cigarettes more than 20 years ago, along the major east-west traffic corridor near the Pennsylvania state border. But when New York opened the Southern Tier Expressway, after a tense standoff with state and federal officials - led in part by the new President, no less - all that traffic was diverted away from his massive moneymaking machine, long before anyone knew what the Internet was. Predictably, his enterprise eventually closed. He's thrived on a rebel image ever since, and that's not about to change anytime soon.

* * *

Is there anything more telling about our almost daily disavowal of reality than a lawsuit challenging one of the two local fiscal stability authorities that actually went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court?

It didn't actually get to the court per se; justices returned the case without comment. But it proved yet again, and this time at the ultimate legal level, that lawsuits against control boards are often unsuccessful.

Until we learn the lesson that solutions are best crafted by reasonable visionaries sitting around a local table - not in a courtroom, not in Albany, not in Washington - the melancholy march into the muck of misery and misjudgments will continue almost unabated.

Since that's really not so hard to understand, why is it virtually impossible to execute here?

* * *

As Paul Harvey would say: purely personal.

This marks my final column for the Weekly Independent Newspaper group. Perhaps writing every week about what ails us, and sadly there is so much, made such a move inevitable, but better jobs and family are chief among the reasons the Sunshine State will be home starting next week. (And where, by the way, the news has been dominated by a state legislature debating not if they will significantly and permanently cut property taxes there, but by how much.) In New York, we're content to be bribed by the "re-elect me" rebate ruse.

Four years ago, I was privileged to be chosen to occupy the space that for decades had been home to a personal idol, the late Ray Herman. His unexpected passing after decades of political commentary, both in print and on the airwaves, left an irreplaceable void on the editorial pages of many weekly newspapers.

I think he would have been proud of one particular moment a year or so ago when in the same week I received a phone call claiming I was nothing more than an apologist for the Democratic Party, followed a day or so later by a letter accusing me of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for the GOP.

If there has been an underlying thread to almost everything I have written, it is this: the electoral power is still with you. Eventually, life being the cyclical creature that it is, the electorate will again rise up and demand that Erie County and New York State become a better place to work and do business, breaking free of the economic shackles created by the politics of personal power, privilege and protectionism that have allowed a great region to wither away.

Many thanks to all of you who have offered your own compliments and criticisms of my work, and many thanks to the WIN group for recognizing that a second, alternative local newspaper voice is an important part of what we do.

I think Ray would approve, and I know I do, that this space will henceforth be filled by the wisdom and broadmindedness of Dan Meyer, editor of The Sun newspaper of Hamburg. Recently married and a new homeowner, he is the perfect voice, for he represents the heart and soul of the generation that must swing the wrecking ball of change.

Go forth and sin no more.

(Opinions are those of the author.)