To find common ground, we will need to ignore borders in NNY

I've got a story, ain't got no moral. Let the bad guy win every once in a while.

MARCH 10, 2010: Back in the day, prophets who warned society about a coming pestilence were rewarded for their candor by being promptly thrown into an abyss.

Compare that to 14 months ago when Gov. David Paterson held a town hall-style meeting in Watertown. He said the state was going bankrupt. The reaction? He was promptly applauded by 450 people who thought it was a novel approach by a politician to speak the truth.

(Yes, my children, there once was a magical time in New York State when people wanted to applaud rather than indict their governor...)

As Paterson outlined the pending wailing and gnashing of teeth, lines began forming behind microphones in the aisles. And soon a number of local educational and non-profit leaders took turns saying much the same thing: “Governor, as you work to resolve the state's financial mess, please don't cut MY budget.”

From that moment on, it has been Groundhog Day over and over again in New York State. Every day Paterson says the state is financially broke. And every day every politician and agency leader in the state agrees with him. And then these same people respond, “but don't cut MY budget.”

(The one person who routinely disagrees with Paterson is Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. If Paterson says the state is $3 billion in the red, DiNapoli argues it is $4 billion. If Paterson says it's $4.2 billion, DiNapoli says it is $5 billion.)

That leaders of area institutions believe state budget cuts would be devastating is not surprising. There is nothing worse for managers than being dependent on the undependable.

But consider this: Almost every leader who spoke that day in Watertown represents a Northern New York institution that was created without state financial support.

One of the people who grabbed a mic that day was John F. Schwaller, president of SUNY-Potsdam, which got its start through good old north country ingenuity as St. Lawrence Academy in 1816.

This area is full of institutions that are now connected to the state at the hip, but were here long before the term “local member item” was created.

The Jefferson County Children's Home, Samaritan Keep, Jefferson Rehabilitation Center, DPAO... this list goes on. In many cases it was our lack of proximity to Albany and New York City that required-forced men and women of good will and vision to build the north country on their own. And not only did this region produce its own educational, medical and eleemosynary institutions, it also produced icons such as Flower, Woolworth and Dewey, who were so far ahead of their time that America had no choice but to adapt to them.

Our governments and institutions are all led by boards of local citizens who want to ensure the continuance of services our citizens have come to expect.

But read the newspaper regularly and you can see what has happened in the last 40 years. We have become a society that sees a need and responds: “I wonder if there is a grant for that?”

The region's woes will fester if we continue to embrace our normal parochialism. Like they say, the average person in Clayton will trust anyone on eBay before trusting someone from A. Bay.

And if they don't say that, they could say this: The effort to sustain a United Way in St. Lawrence County was stymied because it was being directed by folks from Jefferson County, and, well, we can't have that, can we?

A collective parochialism could be a dangerous thing in that our governments would have trouble hiding their duplication of services and costs. Small school districts, whose superintendents are merely glorified principals, and town governments, which exist to provide make-work programs for select families, might be in jeopardy.

But as we consider the challenges now facing schools, medical institutions and recreational facilities, we need to acknowledge that nothing in the north county is too big to fail.

Asking Massena to be interested in Gouverneur and Carthage to care about Sackets Harbor is asking much. But we are very close to the point where asking Albany and Washington to care about anybody is asking even more.