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Some Thoughts While Counting the Empty Offices in City Hall

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

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