By JAMES FINK
Business First

The Erie County Industrial Development Agency has adopted a new request-for-proposal process that will govern several major professional-services contracts it awards.

The new RFP process, which has been in discussion since early spring, has been alternately praised by its supporters and derided by some who feel it is directed at the agency's longtime law firm, Hurwitz & Fine PC, which has served as ECIDA legal counsel since 1990.

After a discussion lasting over an hour, the new RFP procedure was approved by an 11-7 count.

Under the revamped policy, such major contracts as legal, insurance, audit, banking and public relations agreements will be subject to an RFP process in which staff members will seek bids from top local providers. The RFPs will be advertised locally, and the agency's staff will make a recommendation to the ECIDA's Governance Committee, then the entire board.

The terms for the bids will vary, with none lasting more than seven years.

The first RFPs for legal-counsel services will be issued later this month.

"I see this as a movement to eliminate the legal services we already have here," said Frank Mesiah, head of the Buffalo NAACP chapter and a longtime ECIDA board member. "I've objected to this from the beginning because I think we've had outstanding legal services."

Mesiah said he thinks the new policy is a masked attempt to oust Hurwitz & Fine.

"This smacks of an attempt to get rid of them and let someone figure out later how to explain it," Mesiah said.

Not so, said Amherst Supervisor Satish Mohan.

Mohan said Amherst uses Hurwitz & Fine and he has great admiration for their work.

"But, as public officials, we have to be concerned about transparency," he said. "The question is whether we should hire anybody for life or for a fixed number of years. The RFP is the only way to streamline the process in the future."

Barry Brandon, an ECIDA director who helped spearhead the policy review, said the initiative is patterned after other local public agencies, including the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority's.

Lawrence Meckler, NFTA executive director and an ECIDA director, said the intent is to have an open process for all the bids.

"If Abraham Lincoln was our counsel, I'd still vote for the RFP process," Meckler said.