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2008: The Year, Briefly

A sampling of stories we covered in 2008 and their (lack of) impact

Getting Back at Betty

Then: In January, we reported that Betty Tryjankowski, a principal administrator of the City of Buffalo’s demolition program, was being punished by the powers-that-be—transferred to an office two floors from the rest of her department. Her crime? It was her daughter’s pickup that was struck by the Mayor Byron Brown’s SUV in the course of his son’s late-night joy ride in February 2007. Tryjankowski—known in City Hall and to contractors as “Board ’em up Betty”—made the mistake of speaking to the media about the incident at the time. She didn’t approach reporters herself, but when they approached her, she said she believed the mayor had covered up his son’s actions. She was worried that Brown’s insurance company would not pay for the damage to her daughter’s truck until the truth came out.

Ten months later, she was banished to the first floor and stripped of the majority of her functions.

Now: And there she remains, hoping one day to return to the third floor to help facilitate the mayor’s “5 in 5” plan to demolish derelict 5,000 houses in five years.

Buffalo's Gold Coast, The Modern Business Method

Then: The next month we wrote about the city’s purchase of the Steelfields property of South Park Avenue, adjacent to the infamous Hickory Woods neighborhood. The buyout, we suggested, flirted with blackmail: The city felt compelled to purchase the property because it could not trust its development to Steelfields’ principal partner, Gary Smith of Modern Landfill in Niagara County, who had tried to turn the former Republic Steel and Donner Hanna Coke site into a waste transfer station. The late Jimmy Griffin hard-nosed that plan into the dustbin. The environmental remediation of the site was accomplished with $16.5 million wrangled from LTV Steel in bankruptcy court, and the Steelfields partners had been the primary contractors on the job—and they’d received most of the property for nothing. Still, the city forked over $4.6 million more to separate Smith from the property.

Now: The city hopes that the former Steelfields site will develop along the lines of Lakeside Commerce Park, though there has been no movement along those lines yet. Meanwhile, not far down the road at the old Buffalo Color plant, Smith and a set of new partners are proposing a single-stream recycling plant. Which may or may not be Dutch for “waste transfer station.”

Foiled Again

Then: In March, in a fit of pique, I wrote a story called “FOILed Again,” about the mayor’s policy on sharing public documents: They won’t do it unless one files a formal request under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. No exceptions, even for the most obviously public and easily obtainable documents.

Now: Though clearly contrary to the spirit of New York’s Public Officers Law, the mayor’s office maintains the policy. However, it has loosened somewhat: In addition to posting the pay of city employees (information AV had FOILed in 2006), we’re told that City Hall continues to work toward posting all city contracts and related materials online, as is the practice in many cities. Of course, that proposal has been on the table for a couple years and has gone next to nowhere, largely hindered, we’re told, by City Hall’s sprawling Public Works Department.

Friends With Benefits

Then: That same month, we reported a fortuitous coincidence: On the same day that New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released a report criticizing the state’s Empire Zone program for its failure to produce jobs, the Kissling Interests appeared before Buffalo’s Planning Board to seek approval for plans to renovate the former National Casket Company at Virginia and Park Streets—a plan that would rely on Empire Zone credits.

Now: Under fiscal duress, New York State Governor David Paterson has proposed a thoroughgoing overhaul of the Empire Zone program. This is bad news for developers in Buffalo, including Kissling. Rocco Termini complained to the Buffalo News that in this city job-creating businesses of the sort that Empire Zones are meant to benefit rely on developers to build their plants and offices. And no one imagined building Bass Pro or filling in Canal Side, regardless of final plans, without tax benefits.

Schools For Scandal

Then: In March, we nearly changed our initials to AW—as in “All Williams, all the time.” Also in March, we reported that the Buffalo Board of Education was beginning its contractually mandated performance review of mud-bedraggled Superintendent James Williams. The McKinley High debacle, the City Honors scandal, the Discovery School fondling incident. The wasteful and absurd ResulTech contract, allegations of pay-for-play with the private Buffalo Schools Foundation. The flirtation with the job in Memphis. We could not find enough pages in the paper for James Williams over the next six months. So we started a blog.

Now: Williams abides; the McKinley case is closed; the City Honors case, as pertains to allegations of grade-alteration, is not; and last week, in a perfect illustration of the school board’s famed dysfunction, board member Pamela Perry-Cahill, who filed a resolution to get the district out of its contract with ResulTech, filed a harassment charge against board member Vivian Evans. Perry-Cahill claims Evans assaulted her in the ladies’ room in City Hall, trying to intimidate her so she would not introduce the resolution, which ultimately passed.

The beat goes on.

Raucous Caucus

Then: In May, we reported that Masten District Councilmember Demone Smith, feeling excluded from the deliberations of the five-member majority coalition in Buffalo’s Common Council, filed a resolution threatening to split the Council’s Democratic caucus in two.

Now: This week Smith filed a resolution regarding the controversy over the mayor’s proposed 2009 capital budget—which was amended by the five-member majority coalition, most of whose amendments were then vetoed by the mayor. Smith’s resolution resolved to…well, to do nothing. After a handful of “whereas”’s, Smith forgot to follow through on the “resolved.” Instead he wrote “I offer the following budget amendments to the 2009 capital budgets as follows:”

Nothing followed the colon.

The majority coalition tried to overrule the mayor’s vetoes on Tuesday but failed for want of a sixth vote.

Then: In June, AV editor Buck Quigley joined a lawsuit against Newco, a.k.a. Western New York Health System, the body charged with facilitating the orders passed down by the state’s Berger Commission on hospital consolidation. Newco, stacked heavily in favor of the private Kaleida health system and apparently seeking to gut the public benefit corporation that runs ECMC, was defying the state’s open meeting laws.

Now: We won the lawsuit, but the bastards still hold secret meetings. At the beginning of November, Kaleida hosted a “retreat” for all interested parties in the proposed merger between Kaleida and ECMC at the Mansion, a boutique hotel on Delaware Avenue, that included lunch, business, and cocktails. Newco chairman Robert Gioia flat-out lied to AV, telling us there had been no meetings of the board in November. We wrote a story about his lie. Nobody cared.

Then: In the beginning of July, we reported on Judge William Skretny’s decision that the land on which the Seneca Gaming Commission had begun operating a casino was not suited under the law to that purpose. Skretny ordered the US Interior Department to undergo a proper review of the Seneca application for permission to run a casino in downtown Buffalo, and ordered the blue aluminum hangar that hosts the temporary casino to cease operations.

Now: Gambling continues in the big blue hangar. However, after launching appeals and attempting end-arounds, the SGC quit construction on the massive permanent casino, hotel, and entertainment complex, citing the poor financial climate. A contemporaneous Moody’s report on the financial health of the SGC suggested that ongoing litigation might have damaged the SGC’s credit-worthiness.

Meantime, the girders rust in the ground.

geoff kelly

Read more recaps of AV’s news stories of 2008 at AV Daily. We’ll post a couple each day until we return to the office in January.

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