Some Thoughts While Counting the Empty Offices in City Hall

Some Thoughts While Counting the Empty Offices in City Hall	by Geoff Kelly

The Body Politic

• Something’s up at Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corporation.

First, chief fiscal officer John Riccione was fired. That happened about two weeks ago, according to Peter Cutler, the communications director for Mayor Byron Brown. Cutler would not say why Riccione was fired, saying it was a personnel issue and confidential, but another source in City Hall says the firing was “performance-related.”

And then Lorrie Abounader, who coordinates the city’s Empire Zone program, which provides tax benefits to job-creating entities and development projects in specific areas, was put on administrative leave. Abounader’s leave was precipitated by her failure to communicate effectively with businesses that made inquiries to BERC, according to the same City Hall source.

Steve Banko, who heads the regional office of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, told me that for the past several months HUD monitors have been stationed full-time in City Hall, tracking the city’s use of HUD funds. BERC, which receives and disburses HUD funds for urban development projects, is one of the agency’s under scrutiny, according to Banko. Banko doesn’t fully trust local HUD monitors to recognize or report problems in City Hall’s practices when they see them: We’ve been screwing things up in Buffalo for so long, how’s a hometown guy to know right from wrong?

So Banko brought in two HUD employees from DC who he thought might cast an impartial eye on City Hall’s use of federal funds. Banko says the out-of-town guys were floored, especially when they looked at BERC. “They said, ‘Holy shit. What do these people do?’” Banko told me.

Banko said his monitors were told BERC spent $900,000 last year on salaries. That’s BERC’s estimation, not the result of digging through the numbers to find out who else is being paid through its accounts—or whose cell phone bill is paid with BERC funds, or whose car mileage allowance, etc. Technically, only 20 percent of a program’s funding can be used for administrative costs. That $900,000 in salaries can also be chalked up to “program delivery,” but Banko says you’d have to deliver an awful lot of program for that kind of money.

Banko’s in-house monitors are wrapping up the first of a multi-part study of City Hall’s practices regarding the use of HUD money. Hopefully we’ll relate the results of that report soon.

That City Hall source insists that neither the firing of Riccione nor the disciplining of Abounader is in any way related to HUD’s investigation of the city’s use of federal funds. Rather, I’m told, they are part of an effort to reform BERC’s performance, implemented by new economic development chief Brian Reilly at the behest of Brown.

Either way, a shakeup is good news.

• In other hiring and firing news, Michael Marcy was hired this week as a special assistant to Reilly in the Department of Economic Development, Permits and Inspection Services. Is this the same Mike Marcy who worked for a spell on Baby Joe Mesi’s campaign for State Senate?

• On Saturday the Democratic Party holds a re-organization meeting in the wake of last Tuesday’s primary. The party’s current chairman, Len Lenihan, stands to keep his job, despite a strong putsch by Mayor Byron Brown, Deputy Mayor Steve Casey, and former chairman Steve Pigeon.

Despite the likelihood of Lenihan’s re-election to another two-year term, he should prepare for a challenge from the floor: Glossy mailers have been cluttering the mailboxes of county committee members all week, decrying Lenihan’s leadership and chiding him for failing to accept the support of Tom Golisano, who endowed his Responsible New York committee with $5 million to influence campaigns statewide with the stated intention of shaking up Albany. Pigeon is Golisano’s point man in spending those funds.

The mailers attacking Lenihan carry the same bulk mailing permit as previous Responsible New York mailings, though there is no other text identifying the source. Nor do the mailers suggest who the committee members might vote for to replace Lenihan. Presumably, all will be revealed on Saturday at Hearthstone Manor in Cheektowaga.

Another interesting revelation will be the direction taken by Arthur Eve, Jr.; Champ Eve’s committee candidates fared very well last Tuesday, to the detriment—possibly—of candidates run by the mayor’s faction.

• Political reform is on the Common Council’s mind this week. Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto and South District Councilmember Mickey Kearns have co-sponsored a resolution asking the city’s law department to draft a law that mirrors the federal Hatch Act. The measure would prohibit most city employees from carrying petitions for candidates, donating to campaigns, or running for public or party offices. Lovejoy’s Rich Fontana and Niagara’s David Rivera have signed onto the measure, and Council President Dave Franczyk joined those four in passing it by a five-to-four margin.

North District Councilmember Joe Golombek declined to support the Buffalo Employment Protection Act, on the grounds that he felt it inhibited free speech. He brought forth instead a plan to restructure city government to incorporate a city manager, who would handle much of the decision-making that now resides with the mayor.

Earlier this summer, Golombek told Artvoice that he intended to pursue a resolution asking that the city consider nonpartisan elections, whereby no party affiliations would be listed on voting ballots and primaries would be eliminated. This, he said, was a means of draining the poison from our politics and breaking the hold that various factions within the Democratic political machine have on city government. Golombek said last week that he was putting aside that issue, if only temporarily.

• With an especially bitter primary now in the rearview mirror, it’s no surprise that our elected officials should be talking about ways to contain the bloodletting next time. It was with some surprise, then, that we received on Friday—just three days after the primary—a red, white, and blue poster that reads “Mickey Kearns ’09.”

It seems so early. Is Kearns announcing a run for mayor of Buffalo already? Must the mayor and his supporters gird for battle so soon?

On Tuesday, Kearns told Artvoice that nothing is official. He added, however, that it was no secret that he was interested in running for mayor.

When the signs pictured below start popping up in South Buffalo yards, remember you saw it here first.

—geoff kelly

Reader Comments

Peter A Reese
18 Sep 2008, 07:47

I am no expert on constitutional law, but every first year law student knows that any restrictions on constitutional guarantees must be strictly limited. One case on point comes to mind, LaBrake v Dukes. In LaBrake, New Yorks highest court ruled that the right to pass a candidate designating (nominating) petition is a constitutionally guaranteed form of free speech. The then court out the requirement that a Democrat has to live in the same district as the candidate running for office. Today, a Democrat from Montauk can pass a petition for the Mayor of Jamestown. As you can see, our courts have been pretty good about following this strict limitation doctrine.

I am all for political reform. I have fought to clean up the local political morass for forty years. No one has more battle scars than me. But Joe Golombek is right. We cannot throw out our precious, hard won, and difficult to preserve civil liberties because a group of goons runs the system. A citizens movement to throw the rascals out makes more sense. This is not unlike the Bush Global War on Terror (GWOT). The answer to defending against threats to our rights and liberties is not to surrender them to our own autocracy.

Judy Einach
18 Sep 2008, 09:21

My good friend Hank Bromley points out that we already have restrictions on what politicians can demand of employees with respect to carrying petitions. As I read this it's not a restriction on an free speech but rather a restriction on what those in positions of power are allowed to inflict on those in subordinants positions. It appears current practice is simply ignorance or ignoring of the rules and lack of enforcement. I quote Hank -

"Section 24-22 of the city charter is titled "Political
Solicitation" and makes it a misdemeanor to ask subordinates - and persons who have business pending with the city - to participate in election campaigns, with an exception for top-level direct subordinates in appointed (non-civil service) positions. (There's also another, less
relevant, exception that allows, for instance, sending a solicitation to everyone in a given zip code even if some residents of that area are city employees.)

Hank continues - if you want to see it from a more authoritative source, the charter is available at
http://www.e- codes.generalcod e.com/codebook_ frameset. asp?t=ws& cb=1237_A ."

From my point of view the city manager/politician question, which we've debated in the past, comes down to a question of capability. Communities that have shifted from politician to manager have shifted back to their original form. Same is true for communities that started with a manager then changed to a politician and back again. It's not a question of which is better. It's a question of who's in charge. Is the person in charge capable of doing the job? The debate in Buffalo is not really a debate about structure, but rather indicates a struggle to get capable people into positions so that we can get the change and improved practices we need if we're ever going to have a city government that works well.

We're not a big city in which the failures of politicians can be diminished by a booming economy. We can't afford to elect a mayor who's administration is focused on things political rather than on the very important business of improving city government. We need leadership in city government that is commited to bettering the community instead of some base quest for power that distracts all of us from the real work we need to do.

WNYmind
18 Sep 2008, 12:17

Other than listing a who's not who in Buffalo, what is the point of this article. Who cares, the same old crowd of incompetent fools will run the city regardless.

The city runs without rules or oversight, big deal, they violate the law and charter routinely. It's a joke. Albany should just step in and take the city's charter away, but then again, they are equally currupt.

Peter A Reese
19 Sep 2008, 07:43

WNYmind: Don't be so optimistic! You are getting me all vaklempt!

Judy Einach: Who are you? Who knew you had a brain girl! Maybe we could shame the cheapskates at Artvoice into holding a public conference on manager forms of government. Former Jimmie Griffinite, Sam Iraci, is one of only two ICMA certified City/County Managers in Western New York. His talks about his personal experiences with a strong executive versus city manager form of government are very informative. Sam is back in Buffalo working his own government consulting business. In case you don’t know, Sam was the one guy everybody in City Hall could talk to during the Griffin era. Jimmie (who had many great attributes) was cranky as hell. He would take a burn to a councilman or the comptroller and refuse to communicate with them. That would be swell, but you still had to run the City somehow. So Bob Whalen and/or Jim Pitts could always talk to Sam, whose job it was to schmooze His Honor into doing what was needed. I often suspected that Griffin actually realized exactly what was going on, but he stopped talking to me in 1982 when I supported Cuomo for Governor, so I never got to ask him.

The former Erie County Charter Revision Commission studied the manager form of government extensively and it was the center piece of the final recommendation. Then the Country Legislature spent full time making sure the voters never got a chance to choose a county manager form. And Lenny Lenihan blocked the proposal because he was certain the next County Exec would be a patronage dispensing Democrat. This is an issue which could use a lot more public discussion and debate. One of the major obstacles to a conversion is the naked fact that anyone who gets elected to head a strong executive form is going to be unlikely to voluntarily give up the power and patronage which he or she expected to possess when they got elected.

Hank Bromley: Who is he? Some smart ass with a PhD? The creator and custodian of the County Charter Revision Commission’s web site (ErieCharterReview.org) which is a model for public disclosure worthy of national recognition? Big deal! Just because he is extremely bright and well educated does not mean I am going to listen to him. However, Hank is 100% correct about the City Charter. In addition, the NY Penal Law makes coercion either a misdemeanor or felony depending on degree. Furthermore, the NY Election law has a fun section titled “Corrupt use of position or authority” (Section 17-158). Now if we could only find a DA who would prosecute a politician.

Some Thoughts While Counting the Empty Offices in City Hall

by Geoff Kelly

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