Prelude to a Kiss-off

The mayor’s pre-firing of Robert Leach

At the beginning of this month, Commissioner of Economic Development and Permit and Inspection Services Rich Tobe, perpetually falling out of favor with the city’s ruling consuls, Mayor Byron Brown and First Deputy Mayor Steve Casey, was removed from a three-person panel charged with reviewing best practices for modernizing the city’s permit and inspection services.

Also removed was Robert Leach, the commissioner of Management Information Systems who was acrimoniously canned last Friday, escorted from City Hall by two police officers.

Leach was removed from the panel on March 3, in a letter from Byron Brown that might have presaged his permanent removal from his City Hall duties two weeks later: “I am very concerned by the information we learned at CitiStat Buffalo on February 29 regarding your inability to properly coordinate with and clearly advise my department heads on critical projects,” Brown wrote, refering to a contentious meeting in which Leach reiterated his concerns about the city’s decrepit and ancient IT infrastructure and warned of financial data catastrophes that loomed. Finance Commissioner Janet Penska claimed she’d never heard of such looming dangers; Leach corrected her, reminded her that he’d warned of the IT system’s troubles when he was hired, a year ago, and that the mayor, too, had been directly apprised of the IT system’s shortcomings last summer.

Leach’s insistence on contradicting the professed ignorance of administration officials about the city’s IT problems, as well as other issues, did not wash well. Nor did his penchant for producing correspondence to prove their ignorance was either feigned or a sign of incompetence. Nor did his persistent criticisms of the city’s data handling and its arcane, opaque financial practices, especially in the Public Works Department.

Penska remains on the best practices panel; Tobe and Leach were replaced by Jim Comerford, Tobe’s deputy commissioner, and Brian Reilly, the city’s hire for the newly created position of Chief Economic Development Officer.

—geoff kelly