Hedging our bets against snowy roads

Western New Yorkers of baby boom vintage are fond of saying that there was a lot more snow when they were kids. Theirs is an incorrect observation. The average annual snowfall for Buffalo during the 1950s was 95.8 inches. During the first decade of the 2000s it was a smidgen more, at 96.6 inches.

So, if that isn’t true, then why did it seem like there was? You hear from countless men and women in their 60s, especially those who grew up in farm country, that they remember playing atop huge snow drifts, sliding down them and building forts within them.

There aren’t experiencing a shared delusion: It really seems like there was more snow because it behaved differently back then. 

By behaving differently, I mean it was more likely to accumulate in large drifts.

That’s because there were more -- and smaller -- farms in the 1950s. In 1954, there were 4.78 million farms in the United States, averaging 242 acres in size. Those farmers used hedgerows as boundaries for either their property or fields of differing use. Those hedgerows became windbreaks and prevented blowing snow from spreading all across the land. It collected against those hedges and created some massive drifts (at least through the eyes of a playful child).

Fast forward to 2017. Because of the ongoing transformation of America from an agrarian society to an industrial and service economy, coupled with developments in farming technology and seeds that have boosted yields dramatically, it takes less farming enterprises than it once did to feed the masses. Farms are fewer (there are now 2.1 million in the US) and larger (their average size has grown to 434 acres).

Today’s larger operations purchased those smaller ones that dominated days gone by and added them to their property portfolios. By doing so, there is less of a need for property-delineating hedges. And, with the focus on intensification of agricultural practices, which has led to larger, single-crop field networks, there is less of a need for crop-dividing strips of trees.

I bring this all up in light of last Tuesday’s winter weather. Intense winds of 20 to 40 miles per hour blew snow all over, making for drifted-over roads and incredibly dicey drives through rural locales, affecting most of the readers of this column. It wasn’t a fun commute.

I ask the aforementioned Baby Boomers to think back to their childhood. Back in those days, the drifts were large and plentiful because of roadside hedgerows and the accompanying in-field hedges. The roads weren’t so drifted over because those trees collected the snow and piled it up, and stopped more from coming. Cars and trucks of far inferior technology and lesser tires navigated the highways with relative ease. You might even remember the wisps of wind-driven snow coming from the peaks of drifts, some 3 to 6 feet over the road, rather than right on it.

Country roads were safer back then.

I’m not going to fault farmers for our current predicament. It’s an unintended consequence of changing practices and entirely different industry. Plus, every hedgerow, in my view, equals a loss of revenue. In a state like this in which it’s difficult to do business, let alone a business the health of which hinges entirely on the prospect of good weather, every single penny matters.  

But, it will take farmers to make the roads a little better…with a partnership from local governments.

You certainly can’t ask farmers or local road crews to put up snow fences. We have too many roads. Niagara County alone has a whopping 1,700 miles of pavement. Can you imagine the man hours it would take to fence even a fraction of that?  

Living fences, the aforementioned hedgerows, are the answer. They worked when my parents were kids. They worked when I was a kid growing up on a farm road.

For the benefit of public safety and even less wear and tear on plow equipment, governments should develop voluntary incentive programs for farmers in troublesome areas to plant windbreaks. Incentives are necessary because we can’t ask someone to forgo income from abandoning fair-sized strips of arable land.  

Some states grant significant property tax deductions for the use of windbreaks. Indiana, as a prime example, assesses windbreaks at the rate of just $1 per acre. Farmland in New York typically sells for $1,500 to $2,000 an acre – if we had a $1 assessment here for land repurposed as public benefit, imagine the participation!  

Other states pay outright for windbreaks, which, to me, is a last resort because no one wants to add to the cost of government. Minnesota, for example, pays farmers to leave corn stalks standing in 6 to 20 row increments through April (a less permanent investment of space). That contract runs in one-year installments, so a farmer isn’t bound if he chooses to alternate crops.  

There is a cure for these modern snowy roads that make our drives so white-knuckled. We just need some local and state officials to hedge their bets and gamble on help from the ag industry.

From the 08 January Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News

Who is this Bob Confer guy?

In the coming days, readers of this fine newspaper will have a new weekly columnist on the opinion page. Many of you might be familiar with my work. Most won’t be. Please allow me to introduce myself and the column.

For more than twelve-and-a-half years I’ve written an opinion column for the Greater Niagara Newspapers which are the Niagara Gazette and Lockport Union-Sun and Journal. That collection of dailies once included the now defunct Tonawanda News and Medina Journal-Register.

Over those dozen years I’ve tackled a variety of topics but most of my pieces have centered on public policy. I try to stay away from politics, focusing more on the things that matter. The he-said-she-said machinations of politics don’t really impact your day-to-day life, but laws, regulations, and taxes certainly do and those are the sorts of things I like to get my readers educated, engaged, and even enraged about.

This past week, the Daily News’ editor, John Anderson – someone whose work with the Wellsville Daily Reporter I always admired – reached out to me to see if my column could also run here for the benefit of Genesee County residents. I got the OK from my Niagara County editor, so here I am.

You might wonder, what bent do I write from? Based on the aforementioned basis of my columns (analyzing what government does to you) you might think I’m a conservative. I’ve been called that. But, I’ve also been called an Americanist. More so, I’ve been labeled a libertarian.

No one’s really been able to peg me, which is good. I try not to work under labels and stereotypes and my columns have proven that. I’ve been equal opportunity -- Republican and Democrat policies alike have been fair game.

My always-evolving worldview has been forged from a rural upbringing (I have always lived in Gasport), my career (I am the President of Confer Plastics in North Tonawanda) and my volunteerism (I am the President of the board of the Batavia-based Iroquois Trail Council). I like to think that running a business of decent size (250 employees) and a social service non-profit affords me an in-depth exposure to issues that affect businesses and people and, in turn, the economy and society. So, you will notice that my columns are based in real world experiences and not just theory.

Over the years, that diversity of thought has allowed the column to act in impactful ways. For example, it led to a couple of massive activist campaigns which turned back some regulations that would have killed family farms; and it has helped local businesses understand the capitalistic and moral benefit to employing forgotten Americans like refugees and former convicts.

What? A fellow who blasts government yet sticks up for the oppressed? See what I mean about labels!

I hope that you enjoy what’s to come. You might not always agree with what I write, but sometimes you will. That mix of difference of opinion and shared beliefs is to be expected and it’s what makes newspapers like the Daily News so useful to discourse and activism in America. Otherwise, we’re left to the mercy of social media, larger media conglomerates, and political parties, all of which have created a one-side-versus-the-other routine that’s really bad for this country. We can rise above that. I hope my column shows you that. I look forward to being a part of your newspaper experience.    

From the 29 December 2017 Batavia Daily News

Tax reform will benefit small businesses

There’s a narrative out there that only large corporations will benefit from the tax reform initiatives pushed by the House, Senate, and Trump Administration. That’s a rather narrow-minded and incorrect outlook that overlooks the very real and measurable impact that will come to Main Street, USA.

Almost all businesses, especially the small ones, will win.

The most significant impact to them comes from the cut to the tax rates.

The corporate rate drops to 21% from 35% for any entity classified as a “C” corporation, which is a double-taxed business that pays corporate taxes while its shareholders pay income taxes.

For those businesses classified as “S” corps and limited liability companies (LLCs), which are usually smaller operations that pass-through the income (the business itself doesn’t pay taxes but the shareholders include the profits and losses on their personal returns), it’s a little less cut and dry but meaningful nonetheless. Under the new rules, owners will be allowed a 20% reduction in pass-through income. The goal is to cap those businesses’ tax rates at 25%, rather than having them pay the higher ordinary income tax. 

  

Taking those two changes into consideration, most businesses will have more of their money to work with. Places like farms, restaurants, hardware stores, garages, machine shops, factories, hotels, theme parks and newspapers – the businesses that keep our local economies humming – all stand to gain.

It’s a welcome development, for sure, because we’ve been the ones shouldering the load.

The large corporations who are allegedly the only winners in tax reform are already paying small percentages and sometimes nothing at all. They have armies of accountants and legal counsel on staff who can find all the loopholes and havens that have allowed them to avoid taxation. According to a March report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, roughly half of the Fortune 500 companies that were consistently profitable between 2008 and 2015 had just a 21% effective tax rate over that eight-year period. Eighteen companies on that list paid no federal income taxes for that same period – name brands like General Electric, International Paper, and PriceLine.com.

We little guys who don’t play such games – either because we’re too busy running our businesses or because we aren’t so conniving -- have instead been paying a really hefty dose of taxes. To give you a real world perspective, my company, Confer Plastics, Inc., paid around a million dollars in federal income taxes in each of the past two years. Think about that: GE is nearly 4,000 times larger than CPI by revenue alone, yet we’re the one paying Uncle Sam.

Tax reform will give the moms-and-pops some of that big time benefit that has been reaped by the big boys – except we will put it to worthwhile use in our businesses and, therefore, our communities. Having access to hundreds of thousands more every year, given similar success to the past two, will cause me to pay off debt, invest in equipment and new product lines, compete better globally, and employ more people. I can see the same thing happening to farms and factories – the wealth-creating sectors of our economy -- across the region. The tax cuts afford all of us real, immediate and almost unprecedented economic development.

This isn’t what those on the left want you to believe. They want you to think that the fat cats will get paid and there’s no positive net effect to their businesses and employees. Really? If I was interested in paying almost nothing in corporate income taxes, wouldn’t I have given myself a massive bonus to minimize company profits? I didn’t, and most business owners don’t, because we invest in our companies. That’s what makes a good operation a great one (and a sustainable one).

Similarly, I recently had a tiff with someone on social media who said that growth would occur without cuts because investment in capital is tax exempt. Most business people I know don’t make investments based solely on tax exemptions because we never know what our profits will be by time the year closes out – anything, and I do mean anything, can happen. But, every businessperson will make decisions and moves on growth and risk based on access to capital (especially their own and not the bank’s) and that’s just the sort of thinking and action tax reform will inspire. Cash is king.

So, before you go on poo-pooing the cuts to tax rates and how they benefit the “evil” corporations, think about all the “good” ones in your hometown that will come out as big winners. There are great times ahead for small businesses, especially here in blue-collar Western New York where every single dollar will go a long way in helping the state’s moribund economy finally get back on track.      

From the 01 January 2018 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News