By Rob Thrasher and Girard Plante

A legislative counsel to the late Sen. James Donovan, Meier is no newcomer to the machinations of State government. And upon his election to the Senate in 1996, Meier used his legislative acumen by swiftly co-sponsoring an amendment to the New York State constitution that will compel legislators to pass a budget on time and open the whole process to public scrutiny.

Meier is like all public servants who wax positive about lessening the tax burden on taxpayers, especially a heavily burdened populous that has painfully witnessed the loss of thousands of jobs in the '90s. Despite that gloomy financial analysis, Sen. Meier points to exciting successes that are oftentimes overlooked amidst all the negatives, and envisions the Mohawk Valley Region as a harbinger in technological and, yes, manufacturing industries.

Question from Rob Thrasher:Tell me about your background.
Answer from Senator Ray Meier: I was born in Rome. My mom and dad lived in Rome. My family on both sides are fairly recent immigrants. Both sides came to the United States in the late 1890s. My father's side of the family is German-Swiss, they were farmers. My mother's side was from Austria, and they came here and settled in the Constable area. My father's side was in the area around Florence, near Northern Oneida County. They were farmers. And the only reason we wound up in Rome is because we both came from big families and farms can only support so many people; so my mother and my paternal grandfather both wound up in Rome to get employment at Revere Copper and Brass. A lot of people came to Rome and Utica from the farms to get jobs in the Factories.

Q: You draw an interesting parallel between the work your parents and grandparents traditionally did, such as farming, to moving from the farm to city life because of the shift away from an agrarian society to industrial type work, and to the economies of the 1990's.
A: The closing of Griffis and loss of Lockheed Martin (formerly General Electric Aerospace Industry) was caused by the downsizing of the times. What I tell people is even though it is scary and disruptive, it is also very necessary because economies are a dynamic thing and if they're not changing, they're dying. Just as my grandfathers had to make the decision that they had to get off the farm if they wanted to make a living and move on and acquire new skills, that's what we have to do now. We're moving from defense based and heavy industry into things that are really more oriented towards the future; into an age where the primary medium of commerce is information.

Q: You worked with the late New York Senator James H. Donovan, he was an inspiration to you as he encouraged you to be involved in government.
A: There's numerous stories about that. I worked on a couple of his campaigns when I was in high school at Rome Free Academy. Just after I received my law degree from Syracuse University, I was home visiting my parents, and bumped into Senator Donovan. He asked me how I was doing and I told him I'm working at the Syracuse County Attorney's Office. He said what are you doing in Syracuse, we need you here. I needed a job and found one in Syracuse, but Senator Donovan promised me a part time job working as his (legislative) counsel in Albany. I'd probably be doing something else right now if Jim Donovan hadn't had that kind of faith in me. He was a great man. He had a consistent ethic of respecting life. He was a big advocate for children. In terms of education, he was a big advocate for pre and post-natal care for mothers. He was an advocate for adequate services and opportunities for the physically challenged.

Q: Anything in the near future at the state level for the Mohawk Valley?
A: There are a lot of things. We need to stop looking outside our borders. For years a lot of people thought the solution to our economic woes was to look for somebody big. I call it the Big Kill Theory of Economic Development that General Motors or IBM will come in, build a huge plant, and solve all our problems. My point is that lately we have discovered that we have to pay more attention to existing local industries. And you see over the last couple years and in the present and into the future more attention given to businesses like Camden Wire, and Special Metals. Those are heavy industry. The thing about saving local heavy industry is that as you save them you may experience some downsizing. We're getting into more robotics and so forth, but in the meantime it's very interesting where a lot of job creation is taking place. At the Oneida County Airport, Fiber Instruments started 10 years ago with three people. It's now up to 320 employees. That shows you that there really is nothing new under the sun. There all kinds of stories like that. They're local entrepreneurs and future oriented business technologies who start small and build jobs. What you get from that is a much more diversified economy that's more stable because it's locally based. The other interesting thing is that Lockheed Martin leaves town, takes a lot of jobs, leaves a half-million square-foot facility, and everybody is looking around to see who's coming in. Who filled it? Gene Corasonti. A guy who was born in Utica, and started Conmed Corporation literally out of his house from his kitchen table, and built it into a company that sells its products worldwide. Another example is that the business community has come forward and Tom Clark is one of the real leaders. This is not government's job to rebuild the economy, it's the job of the business community.

Q: You have referred to your parents as immigrants who came to the United States in the later 19th century, who struggled making the transition from strictly farm-oriented people to learning new skills for work in industry, and you allude to "recent immigrants" making a huge impact in the local economy.
A: They refreshed the labor and cultural and social pool of the country and the same thing is happening now with talented immigrants who are coming into the area and working at places like Conmed. And who also are buying the houses that were boarded up and written off. You're going to see this new wave of immigrants as a tremendous asset not just for the economy but also an asset in reclaiming some of the neighborhoods in places like Utica.

Q: What is your philosophy on the state budget?
A: School districts have their aid held up so they have to borrow to meet their cash flow. Most people understand they have jobs and tasks that have to be done on time and here they have state legislators who cannot get a budget done on time. People are angry. I lead a delegation a group of local veterans groups who were there to talk about veterans issues. One vet said: "If I don't do my job on time, my boss fires me." And that's an interesting point. The life of an incumbent in the New York State legislature is almost as secure as a member of the Politburo in the old Soviet Union, so the public has a role to play here, too. When I was Oneida County Executive, the county budget was on time every year. The reason for that is not because of better people, it's because there is a consequence in the county charter for the budget being late. The county executive must propose the budget and the legislature must enact a budget not later than the first of November. If they don't do that, the budget proposed by the county executive becomes the budget, and the legislature loses the opportunity to make changes. We need to amend the state constitution so that any inaction in a timely manner brings about a consequence. The other thing that needs to be enacted by constitutional amendment is that both the Assembly and Senate need to enact their own version of the budget, which would then go to conference committee. The committee must meet in public so that they and the news media can report what is going on. Public attention via the media keeps pressure to get the job done. That amendment passed the Senate recently. It has to pass the Assembly, then must pass both houses again next year, and then it goes to public referendum. This amendment could conceivably be law by the year 2000.

Q: How does the future of the Mohawk Valley tie into technology?
A: We'll always have some of the traditional flagship industries here. Those operations won't be as labor intensive. We're not in a major city but the information age makes your location irrelevant. For example, a guy I went to high school with recently moved back to Rome from Greenwich Village. He could move back to Rome and still do his work because it's not necessary to live down the street from the people you do business with anymore. The quality of life will make a huge difference for us as the information age allows these types of moves back to the area.