Who’s your daddy? Or your cousin? Who cares? In ER, it appears to make a difference. This article is better than most about this issue, since it actually does a bit of a comparative analysis with other villages in the area.

The town-village organizational meeting Jan. 2 in East Rochester included a genealogy lesson.

Mayor Jason Koon asked the boisterous crowd of more than 700 people if they knew that one of the village’s justices and the village administrator are brother and sister and that the deputy clerk and former town nutritionist are also siblings.

So?

At least 15 people who worked for East Rochester in 2007 were related by blood or marriage to someone else on the village payroll. No state laws are broken when relatives work for the same municipality. But such connections can breed cynicism, says Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog and advocacy group.

“When you want effective, efficient government, you need a certain degree of independence,” she said. “If there are too many family and friends, it has a tendency to become an echo chamber. … It raises questions in the minds of the public.”

Well, yeah. And, yikes– that’s a lot of blood relations going on in there. Ultimately, though, it shouldn’t matter who’s in the job, if you can answer 2 questions:

1) Is the position necessary? Is it worth having the highest taxes in the county?

2) Is the person in the job the most qualified and capable of those who are available? Have they done a good job?

Any place I’ve worked, your work is periodically reviewed and it’s determined whether or not you deserve to stay or be let go. Especially if you’ve been around for years and years. There’s no such thing as tenure in the regular work world, and there shouldn’t be in village administration. That’s why I agree with this:

Early in his administration, Koon asked nine appointed officials to submit letters of resignation. He said he planned to evaluate them to determine whether their continued employment was in the best interest of East Rochester, one of five town-villages in New York. So far he has fired two appointees with close family ties to others in power.

Apparently, I’m not the only one that sees a problem with the status quo:

But Koon has made no secret of his concern about what he considers a tight-knit group of relatives and friends on the village payroll. Koon says he’s still learning all of the ways in which East Rochester employees are connected.

“A large number of village residents felt like outsiders,” he said at the organizational meeting. “This much closeness in government raises many questions.”

That statement was met with loud cheers from the crowd.

A close-knit community is a great thing, no question. But when the governance of that community is too close-knit, that’s a problem:

But East Rochester resident Deborah Wheeler says the family ties in East Rochester are far from charming. She believes the payroll is padded with relatives and friends of those in power, and she says that may be a reason East Rochester’s property taxes are the highest in Monroe County.

How do other local governments compare, in terms of nepotism?

In May, former Riga Supervisor Pamela Moore replaced her deputy supervisor with her husband. New York law did not prohibit it, but a public outcry eventually forced Moore to remove her husband from the position.

East Rochester does not appear to have any relatives supervising each other. In most cases, relatives work in different departments and do not come into contact professionally. However, family ties in East Rochester town-village offices seem to be stronger than in some other villages in Monroe County.

Elaine Driscoll, the village clerk in Scottsville, said she is unaware of family ties among Scottsville employees. In Honeoye Falls, bookkeeper Carolyne Borate said that during her 13 years with the village, she recalls that a trustee’s brother used to be the part-time superintendent of the cemetery.

In Spencerport, village clerk Jackie Sullivan said a husband and wife had both worked for the village, but the wife recently left her job.

And how about the former town-village attorney? He wasn’t related to anyone! But…

Koon was displeased when Bryson recommended that the town-village pay $10,000 to Paul Bonacchi, who had sued the town-village on allegations of false imprisonment, malicious prosecution and violation of his right of free speech. He had been arrested after allegedly swearing at a woman during a Koon campaign event last summer.

This case was dismissed by Town-Village Justice J. Scott Odorisi, and the Town-Village Board voted in December to settle the lawsuit. Odorisi’s father, lawyer Frank Odorisi, later advised Koon that the village had been wrong to pay Paul Bonacchi $10,000.

“Stuff like this drives all of us crazy,” said East Rochester resident Debra Ingerick. “That’s why we voted in a new mayor.”

Oh, boy. Sometimes it just makes your head hurt.

Ultimately, the most important thing is that the village be run well. When business and people start coming in, crime and taxes go down, and villagers can attend town meetings and expect that they’ll be heard, that’s what I would call a well-run village.

One of the best ideas I’ve seen yet came not from the article, but from a commenter in the StoryChat:

Best path forward would be to spend a little money on an unbiased outside consultant firm which could come up with the startling conclusion that there are about twice as many folks on the village payroll as is necessary and that moving to phase out high cost services to outside private (and effecient) contractors could save taxpayers more than a few dollars off their property taxes.

Makes sense to me. Do an efficiency study, with actual facts and stuff, and see what’s up.

I think it’s funny how ER old-guard spokesmodel Marisa Redanty is once again featured, except, um, from what I understand, she’s NOT an ER resident, though she keeps getting billed as one.