Outrages & Insights

City Hall Under Scrutiny

Eliot Ness has entered the building - City Hall, that is.

As I report in today's Buffalo News, the FBI, the State Police and the Erie County District Attorney have assorted floors of City Hall under scrutiny.

The State Police and the DA have zoned in on Brian Davis, the Councilman who has trouble paying his bills, disclosing his finances to the Board of Elections and telling the truth about where he went to college. Their investigation is focused on allegations that Davis is a serial bad check writer and the Councilman's repeated failure to file financial disclosure reports with the Board of Elections.

I give DA Frank Sedita credit for treading where his predecessor rarely did. Especially because Sedita last year enjoyed the backing of both Mayor Byron Brown, who counts on Davis' support in the Council, and Steve Pigeon, who is working behind the scenes on the mayor's re-election campaign.

Sedita is showing he is his own man. If he continues this streak of independence, he could wind up a white knight in helping to clean up this region's cesspool political culture.

Of course, he's working with a lot fewer prosecutors and investigators than DAs in comparable counties, which is one reason I suspect the State Police are involved in the Davis investigation. Wouldn't it be nice if the DA's office was given the money to staff a public integrity unit like his counterpart in New York City?

The feds, on the other hand, have no problems with resources, and I find the FBI's interest in the Brown administration to be especially intriguing.

Keep in mind who is part of the mix - the agency's Government Corruption Unit. 

Sounds kind of ominous, doesn't it?

I couldn't drag much out of Acting U.S. Attorney Kathleen Mehltretter other than, yeah, we're up to something, but the something involves the Government Corruption Unit, so you know they're not checking for parking meter violations.

Moreover, a source familiar with what the feds have been looking into suggests this could be serious business.

First, there's Davis and the One Sunset fiasco. No big surprise there.

There's also City Hall's continued mismanagement of block grant money. Again, no surprise. (I've got to say that when I read the HUD audit that apparently piqued the interest of investigators, the report  described a program that seemed ripe for corruption.)

I'm told the FBI also has fielded allegations that - let's see, how can I put this diplomatically? - some folks involved in Brown's re-election campaign have been doing some inappropriate things that go beyond the e-mails that Tanya Perrin-Johnson has been sending to the troops.

A few words of caution.

Just 'cause the authorities are sniffing around doesn't mean there's fire to be found underneath all the smoke. But there sure seems to be a lot of smoke.

Guilty (Reilly), and more guilty (Brown)

Mayor Byron Brown had it right when he said Brian Reilly had too much on his plate serving  both as commissioner of economic development, permits and inspections and as president of the Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp.

What the mayor failed to say, however, is that it was Brown who loaded Reilly's plate like a starving man on a buffet line.

In other words, Brown, in forcing Reilly to step down as BERC president, is cleaning up his own mess.

Brown hired Reilly a year ago February as the city's chief economic development official. The mayor then gave Richard Tobe the boot and put Reilly in charge of the permit and inspections department that Tobe had headed. Meanwhile, the mayor failed to fill a budgeted position to oversee green issues and dumped that work in Reilly's lap, as well. All the while, Reilly headed up BERC.

Not that this made Reilly immune from doing political homework assigned by Deputy Mayor Steve Casey. In whatever spare time Reilly might have otherwise had last summer, he was spotted carrying petitions for candidates favored by the mayor.

But before you start feeling sorry for Reilly, keep in mind that he didn't help himself.

The decision to change BERC's insurance options in a way that allowed him to put the woman he lives with on his health insurance policy may or may not have involved skulduggery, but it certainly displayed poor judgment.

Ditto for his defense of Michelle Barron in the wake of the One Sunset restaurant fiasco.

Double-ditto for his MO of not returning calls to a wide range of people and snarling at many of them when he did pick up the phone. He turned off a lot of people in the development community pretty quickly, people in both corporate suites and grass-roots organizations.

But Reilly has not played a central role in most of the controversies to beset the city's economic development efforts since he arrived on the scene.

There's the decision, subject to likely rejection by the Common Council, to select a team headed by former Council President James Pitts to develop a waterfront hotel. It was Brown, not Reilly, who ramrodded that decision through the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency.

There's the money and manpower lent by BERC to help Leonard Stokes run One Sunset into the ground within a year of opening. Most of the damage was done by the time Reilly was hired.

P.S.:  the guy Stokes met with at City Hall to help make things happen was named Brown, not Reilly.

It was Brown, not Reilly, who carried on about the supposed $4.5 billion in economic development activity that turned out to be a lot of smoke and mirrors.

There's the blind eye the administration has turned to sustainable economic development or just about anything else having to do with green.

And, of course, there's the ongoing ... and ongoing ... and ongoing squandering of federal block grant funds and accompanying critical audits by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Jimmy Griffin got the ball rolling, plowing money into the salaries of bureaucrats and loans to dubious development deals. Tony Masiello did likewise. And not much has changed under Brown,

If anything, things have perhaps gotten worse, considering the most recent HUD audit released this spring found no fewer than 19 serious deficiencies. And when the Common Council wanted documents to help get to the bottom of things, it had to resort to filing Freedom of Information requests that the administration took its sweet time in responding to -- and not completely, at that.

Is any of this Brian Reilly's fault?

Nope. The buck stops at the mayor's desk.

In short, shed no tears for Brian Reilly. He's still got $91,162 in salary to keep him warm -- and to help his girlfriend buy health insurance.

At the same time, remember who is really calling the shots, who ultimately is responsible for this mess. It's the guy, two months away from a primary, who all of a sudden is preaching "change and reform."

A know nothing theme at City Hall

On May 26, in the wake of a Buffalo News investigation into the city's role in the failed One Sunset restaurant, we reported on Mayor Byron Brown's response.

Two weeks ago, BERC President Brian Reilly informed Brown he was launching an internal review of the agency to assess its handling of One Sunset. Would the inside probe have been launched even if The Buffalo News hadn't been seeking documents and other information? Brown said he didn't know the answer to that question.

On Monday, reacting to my story about one of his commissioners e-mailing her employees about working on the mayor's re-election campaign, Brown said:

“I did not know the e-mails went out when they did.” 

In today's paper, we report on the mayor's reaction to my story about changes in health insurance options at the city's major economic development agency made late last year that allowed its president to obtain health insurance for his live-in girlfriend:

 Brown said neither he nor other members of BERC's board were aware of the changes in insurance coverage until recently.

Anyone see a pattern here?

A poverty of principles at City Hall

In the grand scheme of things, a $9,099 health insurance policy isn't a huge deal.

Then again, neither is $30,000 for BlackBerrys.

Not when you're talking about an annual budget of more than $5 million, which is the operating budget of the Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp.

But when that budget is supposed to be targeted to combat poverty and promote economic development in the nation's third-poorest city, well, $30,000 here and $9,099 there speak volumes.

And what it says is that bureaucrats get first dibs on money earmarked to deal with poverty.

You poor folks, well, step to the back of the bus.

It's all on display, has been for years.

For three decades, the city has been squandering its block grant funding. HUD finding after HUD finding has concluded the city is spending too much on city salaries and risky loans.

The investigation Pat Lakamp and I did in May found that Brian Davis shifted $30,000 in block grant away from his Ellicott District to help fund One Sunset, just a couple of doors down from Hutch's, about the swankiest restaurant on Gates Circle.

And now, as I report in today's News, BERC expanded its health insurance options last December in ways that enabled BERC President Brian Reilly to opt out of his single plan that cost the city $3,730 in favor of brand-spanking new policy that is costing the agency $9,099.

Hey, it's only money.

Poor people's money, at that.

Common Council President David Franczyk raises a good question: Why did the BERC bureaucracy, headed by Reilly, make the decision to expand coverage knowing that the guy in charge stood to benefit. Shouldn't that have fallen to BERC's governing board?

"For his own protection, you think he'd want to bring it to the board," Franczyk said.

It makes sense, doesn't it, that if you stand to benefit from a decision, you either recuse yourself or give your superiors a say - or at least a heads up. Reilly didn't do that. Instead, he signed the contract with the health insurance company, then got his girlfriend coverage.

It's all so City Hall.

As I've nosed around the agency the past several months I've learned that the bureaucracy often keeps the board in the dark. The decision to alter health insurance options in a way that benefits the guy is par for the culture. Been going on well before Reilly got there.

Moreover, I've learned that Reilly likes to play things close to the vest. Suffice to say, he's tough to reach on the phone.Take yesterday, for example.

I placed numerous calls and e-mails to his office, explaining that I needed to talk to him about his health insurance. Did likewise with his attorney.

What I got back, to quote Simon and Garfunkel, was the sound of silence.

City Finance Commissioner Janet Penska, to her credit, finally got the lawyer to come down to her office late in the day to answer some questions.

Reilly, I'm still waiting to hear from. Usually, Peter Cutler, the mayor's press secretary, can get him to return a call, even if it's days or even weeks later. Not yesterday.

Better to sulk than speak, I guess.

OK, so he blows off reporters. Not that big of a deal, really. I mean, his boss, the mayor, does it all the time.

But I'm far from the only one to get the silent treatment from Reilly, and some of the people he's given the cold shoulder to have come bearing a precious commodity - investment in the city.

In the past couple of months I've fielded phone calls from a prominent developer, a state official and someone heading up a non-profit, all of whom were all looking to invest money in the city. I'm not talking chump change - among the three of them, they were involved in projects with the potential to bring upwards of $100 million into the city. All three are credible people involved with credible organizations. Very.

All three had the same experience. They called Reilly and he failed to return their phone calls.

Several tried him more than once. One guy eventually got through, only to be snarled at. The other finally called me asking who else he could call in City Hall. The third fellow finally got through, only to feel he got stiffed in the end.

Such is the state of economic development efforts in the city. That, and One Sunset.

e-mail shenanigans fire up Kearns

Folks have been grousing about Mickey Kearns' lackluster, at best, mayoral campaign, but on Monday the South Buffalo councilman took off the gloves about the Brown administration leaning on City Hall employees to work on Byron Brown's re-election campaign.

Reports Bob McCarthy:

In his first real criticism of Brown in his so far quiet campaign, Kearns said the mayor has presided over "one of the most corrupt" administrations in recent memory.

"It's time to sweep the corruption out of City Hall and start with a new administration," he said.

Them's fightin' words.

Kearns wants the state Civil Service Commission and city Ethics Commission to investigate.

Good luck. With all the shenanigans of the past few months -- block grant irregularities, Brian Davis, One Sunset,  now the e-mails -- we've yet to see an Eliot Ness type knocking on doors. Heck, I'd settle for Joe Friday at this point.

Brown, for his part, said he didn't know about the e-mails.

"These employees should not have been instructed to do any campaign volunteering during work hours. That is not how we do business and I do not support that. Campaigning is not in their job description, it is strictly voluntary."

If that's the case, Mr. Mayor, I have two questions:

-- Why was Dana Bobincheck, one of your top aides, copied on the e-mails?

-- Are you going to discipline Bobinchek or Tanya Perrin-Johnson, the commissioner who sent the e-mails, or will she they be held harmless, as has Michelle Barron for her role in the One Sunset restaurant fiasco?

Kearns has a decidedly uphill fight ahead of him, one that he's made steeper by waiting so long to kick his campaign into gear, if, in fact, his press conference Monday on the steps of City Hall represents the launch of a campaign.

Brown has a boatload of money and, as my story yesterday pointed out, has the benefit of drawing on the city work force for campaign workers. And with Steve Pigeon in the mix, Brown can count on Tom Golisano's Responsible New York to kick in money if need be.

In short, Brown enjoys the power of incumbency.

Kearns, meanwhile, is an unknown quantity to a lot of city voters. I can't offer any insights at this juncture, as I've only had a handful of dealings with him.

 

 

Campaign shenanigans at City Hall

I've got a story running today that provides a glimpse into how Byron Brown and Steve Casey are leaning on the City Hall work force to work on the mayor's re-election campaign.

But before I get into the details, I want to ask city workers to contact me with any information they can provide how how the game is being played. I'm hearing all kinds of hair-raising stuff, but it's hard to differentiate the beef from the baloney. I need more intelligence.

Please send me an e-mail at jheaney@buffnews.com, but do it from your private account. Please provide details and a cell or home phone number. I will treat your e-mail in the strictest of confidence;  I haven't burned a source in 35 years and am not about to do so now.

Back to the story: Tanya Perrin-Johnson, who Brown appointed commissioner of community services when he took office in 2006, has sent out a series of e-mails to about 20 members of her staff making it clear that she expects them to work on the mayor's re-election campaign.

Here's what she sent on June 2:

Subject: Volunteer opportunities to Re-elect Mayor Byron W. Brown  

Community Services Team:  

I sent an email regarding volunteer opportunities to assist in the re-election of Mayor Byron W. Brown on Monday and this is a follow-up with updated information.

This week, your help is needed at the campaign headquarters from 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm. Wednesday-Friday.

Again, select either Saturday or Sunday for a 4 hour block to volunteer your time.

Please make sure you sign in and that you work until 9:00 pm during the week and minimally 4 hours on the weekend. Your services are needed minimally 8 hours per week.

"Campaign hours on the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) are from 10:00 am - 9 pm.

Next week, Tuesday, June 9th, everyone is expected to be at the Headquarters after work ; a 4:00 pm, 4:30 pm or 5 pm until 9 pm. This is a busy day as it is the first official day for petitions. There is a lot of work to be done and your help is needed.

From that point on, Community Services team will be at Headquarters on Tuesday until 9:00 pm where you will receive your assignment. If you are unable to volunteer on that Tuesday or a weekend, please notify myself and Dana Bobinchek at the email above and accommodations will be made for you to make up the time during the week.

Due to the importance and volume of activity, it is important that that we all contribute to the re-election of Mayor Byron W. Brown. Also, recruit friends and family to assist.

Please respond that you have received this e-mail. Let me know the days and times you will work this week. If I don't hear from you by Wednesday, I will contact you.

Thanks. Tanya

Not much left to read between the lines, huh? I mean, if you get that e-mail from your boss, you're showing up to do campaign work, right?

As Blair Horner of NYPRIG put it, the e-mails are indicative of "an inherently coercive relationship between employer and employee, supervisor and subordinate."

PS: "If it's not illegal, it should be."
 
Perrin-Johnson didn't' stop with that e-mail, but has followed up with a number of other ditties, which I detail in my story.

Long story short, this is a no-no under the city charter, and perhaps under the city ethics code.

Yes, you can lean on appointees who serve at the pleasure of the mayor, and some of those receiving the e-mails fit that category. But you have to leave the rank and file alone, and they, too, have been targeted.

What I find surprising isn't that the Brown people are putting the arm to employees, but that they're sloppy enough to put it in writing.

And the mayor's crew can't claim this is one commissioner who is operating off the reservation, not when Dana Bobinchek, one of the mayor's top aides, is copied on the e-mails.

Again, no surprise.

Keep in mind that Casey and Bobinchek were on Brown's Senate payroll back in 2005 during the mayoral campaign. Casey, in particular, worked day and night on the campaign while claiming to also put in an honest day's work in the Senate job.

We are now to believe that he's sticking to his duties as deputy mayor 9 to 5. Not that he's willing to talk about it.

Others are talking, however. Among what I'm hearing is that Casey and Steve Pigeon are keeping hours at campaign HQ on nights and weekends, when the King of Coups isn't in Albany advising Pedro Espada.

 

Happy July 4 with Hendrix

Happy Xmas (War is Over) went over well at Christmas, so let me brighten this holiday with some patriotic finger picking.

Hit it, Jimi.

Our senators do downstate's bidding

Here's how clueless Bill Stachowski and Antoine Thomspon are: The Democratic leadership trotted them out in Albany Thursday to plead for passage of an extension of the Power For Jobs program.

Trouble is, the program does Western New York little good. In fact, it's one of the ways the profits from  the Niagara Power Project are used to benefit downstate business interests.

Here's what I reported on the program in 2007 in my Power Failure investigation of the New York Power Authority:

The program was started in 1997 and was supposed to end in 2000, but lawmakers continue to extend it. In the process, they have required the authority to reimburse the state for an increasing share of lost tax revenue, now 100 percent. The program involved 599 companies as of a year ago, including 89 from Erie and Niagara counties, whose allocation of discounted power accounted to 12 percent of the statewide total.

Power For Jobs is now slated to end this June, but the authority as it now stands remains on the hook for another contribution of $175 million.

While Niagara power isn't the sole source of funding for the voluntary contributions, the Power Authority acknowledges the plant's profits do go a long way.

In other words, profits from our plant are being used to subsidize the operations of downstate businesses.

Rep. Brian Higgins is negotiating with the New York Power Authority to secure a portion of the Niagara Power Project's profits to benefit Western New York. The expiration of the Power For Jobs program would free up money towards that end. But we've got Thompson and Stachowski doing the bidding of downstate interests instead.

They're team players, all right. Just not our team.

 

We're No. 3 - again

We interrupt this broadcast of another Byron Brown campaign commercial proclaiming Buffalo's revival for this Census update.

Buffalo has lost a larger share of its population this decade than all but two cities in the nation, if you factor out New Orleans. Ya know, Katrina and all that, and the Big Easy is gaining population again.

Buffalo has lost 7.4 percent of its population, trailing only Flint (down 9.6%) and Cleveland (9.2%)

Let's see, we're the third-poorest city our size in the nation and we're also No. 3 when it comes to population loss among all cities of 100,000 or more.

We're down about 22,000 residents since the start of the decade, with more than 4,000 voting with their feet since Brown took office. Here are the details.

In fairness to the mayor, the bleeding has slowed somewhat since he took office in 2006, although it's hardly reason to proclaim victory as he has been doing on the campaign trail.

Buffalo now ranks as the nation's 69th largest city, with a population of 270,919.

By comparison, our 7.4 percent drop this decade compares with increases of 4.4 percent in New York City and 2.9 percent in Yonkers, and decreases of 0.8 percent in Albany, 5.7 percent in Syracuse and 5.9 percent in Rochester.

Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Binghamton account for four of 11 cities experiencing the biggest losses as a percentage of their population in the nation.

Meanwhile, back in Albany, the food fight in the Senate continues. Fiddle on, boys - there's less and less left to burn.

To put it in further perspective, Buffalo has lost population this decade at more than twice the rate of Detroit.

Detroit!

OMG!

This calls for a topical song.

Hey, I've got one.

Something having to do with a city replaced by parking spaces.

Hit it, Chrissie.

What?! Democracy in New York?!

I don't know if I'd vote for her or not, but I'm happy to read that Rep. Carolyn Maloney intends to challenge  Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Hillary Clinton.

No knock against Gillibrand. I just think voters ought to have a choice. Unlike, say, Chuck Schumer and the Obama crowd, who have been working to avoid a Democratic primary.

I understand, there's that magical 60 votes in the Senate to consider. Then again, there's that quaint notion that voters have a choice when they go to the polls.

I know that's not in vogue here in New York, where incumbents in the state Legislature win re-election 98 percent of the time. But given that Gillibrand has never run in a Democratic primary for her Senate seat, much less a general election, what's wrong with Democratic voters test driving her?

As for Maloney, I interviewed her this winter when she passed through to meet the locals when Hillary's seat was up for grabs. I wasn't particularly impressed, but then again, I don't know how Gillibrand would have struck me, either. (Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis know there's not many pols I'm impressed with.)

Speaking of Schumer, I see where he showed up the other day for a press conference (what a surprise!) in which Yahoo! made it official - it's coming to Lockport. Schumer declared that with Yahoo! here, the high tech world will beat a path to our door. That's not what the experts I've spoken to have said.

Data centers usually don’t act as a catalyst to other high-tech development, however, said Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology Innovation Foundation, a technology policy think tank in Washington, D. C.

“They tend to be relative stand-alone entities,” he said. “They don’t generally have a lot of spinoff.”

The whole scene involving Yahoo!'s announcement underscores to me what economic development in this town is really about - ribbon cuttings and press conferences. But hey, what do you want for a measly subsidy of $810,000 per job?