Bravo Donn, excellent atricle. Of course I loved the Hoyt line among the many others. This is an idea I think we should look into, just think of how much money we could save the taxpayers of this state…..

Casey-cam? We need Citizen-cam

Much fuss has been made about Casey-cam, a proposal from Mayor Byron Brown’s chief aide, Steve Casey, to put surveillance cameras throughout City Hall.

Casey wants, for political reasons, to know who comes into the building and with whom they meet. Knowing what political rivals are up to helps him protect his boss’ back.

It is a bright idea, but it misses the larger point. The best use of video surveillance isn’t for politicians to watch each other. It is for us citizens to keep an eye on the politicians.

We are their bosses. We pay their salaries. We have a right to know if they are on the job, or goofing off. Forget Casey-cam. We need Citizen-cam.

Given today’s technology, a small video chip could be affixed to every elected official. It would constantly broadcast a live feed to public access TV or an Internet site. At any time of day, we could find out where our public servants are and what they are up to.

Casey was accused last year of working for then-State Sen. Brown’s mayoral campaign on our time. Citizen-cam would have showed us whether he was in his staff office or out pounding the pavement for Brown.

Monitoring Casey’s movements is just the tip of the iceberg. Casey and Brown are products of Albany, the home of the nation’s most dysfunctional government. Affixing Citizen-cams on our state lawmakers would give us a close look at the chaos.

Cheektowaga Assemblyman Paul “Frequent Flyer” Tokasz never met a “fact-finding” trip he didn’t like. Citizen-cam would reveal whether Tokasz was in a conference room in Tucson or out on the golf course. It would show if he is probing “the geopolitical situation” in Greece, as he claimed last year, or sunning himself on a white-sand Mediterranean beach. It would have revealed what his well-traveled Assemblymate, Kenmore’s Robin Schimminger, did on a junket last year to Taiwan.

Tokasz and Schimminger could serve as a human travelogues, sending back video snippets from exotic places most of us will never see. Put Citizen-cam on them and we all can drop the Travel Channel from our cable TV service.

The uses of political surveillance are endless. We would know whether Assemblyman Sam “The Perk-inator” Hoyt still uses campaign contributions to buy himself cars, pay for dinners and even tip the baby sitter.

Citizen-cam also could reveal the bigger picture. Albany is the land of special interests. We would discover which public servants suck up to union leaders, let lobbyists pick up dinner checks or take campaign cash from reform-allergic forces at our expense.

We’d learn which legislators show up for the sham committees that pad their paychecks or vote on bills already decided behind closed doors. About half of some 200 Albany lawmakers, whose base salary is a cushy $79,500, have other jobs. We’d find out if they spend more time serving the public or padding a private paycheck.

Closer to home, Citizen-cam could blow the cover off the County Legislature - a place notorious for rewarding part-time work with full-time pay ($42,588). We’d see how many hours lawmakers put into deciphering the budget and how many they spend driving a bus, teaching a class or running a restaurant, to cite a few of their other-job distractions.

The eyes are a window to the soul. Citizen-cam would be our window into the murky world of politics. It would put us at the table where deals are cut and party bosses decide which faithful follower - regardless of merit - is anointed for the next political vacancy.

Casey has a bright idea, but he puts it in the wrong hands. Politicians don’t need a hidden camera to keep an eye one another. We citizens need it, to keep an eye on them.

e-mail: desmonde@buffnews.com