In the dispute between the Erie County control board and the Giambra administration over the sale of county tax liens, no one has come closer to the truth of the matter than County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz, who summarized the imbroglio this way: The board doesn’t trust county leadership.

He might also have added that the board has good reason not to trust the county leadership and, what is more, that the county leadership not only doesn’t trust the board, but actively resents it. That’s not too surprising, given that three members, talented as they are, were officials in the administration of former County Executive Dennis Gorski, whom Joel Giambra defeated eight years ago.

In that poisonous atmosphere, it was only a question of when county taxpayers would be penalized. With the bungling of the tax liens sale, they were. Taxpayers may lose several million dollars as a result of the failure of their elected officials and the control board to work together.

In a nutshell, the control board denied the county the right to sell certain delinquent property tax accounts at a discount because the county sought bids from only two companies and because of the duration of the contract. The county rebid the sale and received responses from only the same two companies, but at a significantly lower price. The county and the control board blame one another, but in the end, neither won anything, while taxpayers lost.

On the narrow but significant issues of process, the control board had cause to reject the deal. Open bidding is the standard process for big public contracts. It not only ensures that taxpayers get fair value, it preserves the more amorphous quality of public confidence in the inherently corruptible mechanism of government. The control board can hardly have forgotten the Erie County furniture fiasco, in which a friend of Giambra sold office furniture to the county at what was later found to be hugely inflated prices.

Still, the county appears to have been correct in its contention that only two companies would have been interested in buying the liens. With the control board’s rejection of the first bids, taxpayers lost up to $10 million, county officials say, because of rising interest rates and other changes in market conditions.

This problem was created for no better reason than failure to follow established procedures and lack of communication and respect. Had the county bid the project out as it should have, the board would have had less reason to reject the contract. Had the two sides had an honest enough relationship for the county to convince the board that limiting the bids to two companies was a sensible approach, the problem might also have been avoided.

This is fixable, assuming all parties are interested in doing so. County leaders and the control board must share important information in a manner that is both timely and straightforward. That is especially true of the county, where resentment of the board is palpable.

In addition, the board currently has two vacancies, the most recent one created by the resignation of Sheila Kee, a former Gorski official. Their successors must be appointed on the basis of ability, but that quality should be construed to include a lack of political baggage. The point is to accomplish important goals, not jam a thumb in Giambra’s eye.

This episode may turn out to be less than it has been portrayed, as the county is continuing to negotiate with Xspand, one of the two bidding companies, for a better deal. That would be nice, but this didn’t have to happen, and it will only be a precursor to further failures unless the two sides commit to working together for the benefit of taxpayers.

Copyright 2007 - The Buffalo News