Councilman Rivera calls for FBI investigation of Brown's alleged intimidation of police witnesses in the Stokes release probe.- Police, after apprehending Leonard Stokes two years ago on suspicion of using a stolen handicapped parking permit, were ordered to release him after a highly unusual trip to the mayor's office.
- HUD to audit city development agency -Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp.
- Pay to play housing scam/scheme.
- Federal authorities, DA, state troopers launch probes of City Hall and Brian Davis
- Girlfriends get taxpayer paid health insurance
- City workers Coerced participation in re-election campaign
- Abuses of power and questionable spending in Buffalo’s anti-poverty programs
- One Sunset - Money for antipoverty programs used to fund luxury restaurant
- Unqualified people with questionable backgrounds hired to upper level positions in City Hall
- Chief Brown Supporter in City Hall, Brian Davis, bounces checks, has history of bad debt, state sanctions for failure to file campaign disclosure reports, college credentials unverifiable, tax free house.
- Brown brings peashooter to poverty war
- Unauthorized Double Dipping
- $30,000 Blackberrys
- Silencing Opponents
- Crime Rates Spike
- Streets Not Plowed During Major Snow Storm
- Empire Zone Funds Used for Luxury Condos and Waterfront Hotels
- City Hall Travel and Take Home Cars Questioned
- City Owned Abandoned Homes and Vacant Lots Neglected, Housing Codes not enforced
- City Officials Forced Out
- Mayor boasts of billions in development, but News analysis shows most is only proposed, and much is taxpayer funded
- Mayor Attempts Cover up of Son’s Hit and Run with the Family SUV
- Media Gag Orders – Attempts to Restrict/Control Message
- Casino Gambling Secretly Promoted
- The war on Canisius College
- Sycamore Village (and Shosone Village, the development the Mayor tried to inflict on my neighborhood, and any other housing development in a City with a 25% vacancy rate)
HUD to audit city development agency
Federal housing regulators will undertake a full audit of an embattled city development agency, Common Council members disclosed Wednesday.
The inspector general at the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said the review of the Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp. will begin by early September.
Council members, meanwhile, said they also received verbal assurances from HUD officials that the sweeping review will include other city operations, including the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, that spend anti-poverty funds. Buffalo News, July 30, 2009
Developer: 'Pay to play' mentality stops $12 million project
Disputes stall plan for East Side housingA Cleveland developer blames a “pay to play” mentality in Buffalo City Hall for derailing a $12 million housing plan that has won city planning and state approval but suddenly stalled this spring and summer.
The developer was repeatedly told in recent months that the mayor’s office was holding up the East Side project because the Rev. Richard A. Stenhouse, the head of a faith-based community group, was not given a role in the project, according to a document the developer sent to Albany housing officials. Buffalo News July 27, 2009
7/12/09 Federal authorities, DA, state troopers launch probes of City Hall and Brian Davis
State police and the Erie County district attorney have launched a criminal investigation into the financial dealings of Ellicott Common Council Member Brian Davis, and federal authorities, including the FBI, are scrutinizing City Hall for other potential wrongdoing. http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/731004.html
7/8/09 Girlfriends get taxpayer paid health insurance
Brian Reilly, the city’s economic development chief, gets health insurance for the woman he lives with that’s paid for with public funds intended to promote economic development.
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/727117.html
7/6/09 City workers Coerced participation in re-election campaign
In apparent violation of the City Charter and perhaps also the Code of Ethics, a City Hall department head has e-mailed many of her employees, expressing her expectation that they will work on the re-election campaign of Mayor Byron W. Brown. “Your services are needed minimally 8 hours per week,” Perrin-Johnson wrote in a June 2 e-mail sent to 20 employees.
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/724911.html
6/25/09 Abuses of power and questionable spending in Buffalo’s anti-poverty programs prompt the City Council to send a letter to HUD Inspector General Kenneth M. Donohue Sr., asking him to take the “extraordinary step” of performing a “full and complete audit.”
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/buffaloerie/story/714067.html
6/3/09 One Sunset - Money for antipoverty programs used to fund luxury restaurant.
Full time City employee Michelle M. Barron helped run the restaurant, assisted in drafting what some considered a faulty business plan and helped One Sunset snare publicly funded loans after bankers on an agency committee rejected loan requests. BERC agency employees approving smaller loans and a grant whose amounts exempted the transactions from further banker scrutiny. One Sunset closed last December, and Leonard Stokes (owner of One Sunset) defaulted on $160,000 in city and county loans and grants.
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/690980.html?imw=Y
5/24/09 Unqualified people with questionable backgrounds hired to upper level positions in City Hall
Michelle M. Barron, who played a central role in the funding and operation of the failed One Sunset restaurant, holds a high-ranking city job that calls for a college graduate. But she’s a high school graduate who dropped out of Erie Community College and Buffalo State College. Barron’s job involves making decisions on public finances. But she’s had four liens filed against her for failure to pay her bills and has had her car registration suspended nine times—for a total of 188 days— since 2002, seven times for lapsed insurance and twice for failing to pay parking tickets.
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/buffaloerie/story/681097.html
5/13/09 Chief Brown Supporter in City Hall, Brian Davis, bounces checks, has history of bad debt, state sanctions for failure to file campaign disclosure reports, college credentials unverifiable, tax free house.
Since 2000, state officials have placed a lien against Davis to collect unpaid income taxes, suspended his driver’s license for lapsed auto insurance, and frozen his campaign account because of violations of election laws, according to public records and interviews. His license remains suspended and his campaign account frozen.
Buffalo police investigated Davis in February after the restaurant’s (One Sunset) landlord complained that the Council member wrote a $3,595 rent check that bounced. Police determined the bad check was a civil, not criminal matter. Meanwhile, the landlord still hasn’t been paid.
Davis has been cited by elections officials for failure to file campaign disclosure reports since shortly after he gained public office.
During his first four years in office, the Erie County Board of Elections wrote him seven times about his failure to file disclosures for 14 reporting periods. In November 2004, a letter chided him for “severely delinquent” filings.
Last year, Davis faced criticism when it was disclosed that he was paying no property taxes on his house on Hickory Street because it is located inside an Empire Zone. Houses in the zone can apply for a seven-year waiver on property taxes, which in this case, save Davis and his wife $2,800 a year.
Common Council Member Brian C. Davis says he has a degree in political science from Trinity College. But none of the 10 colleges in the nation with Trinity in their name says Davis has graduated from their school.
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/637358.html
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/663608.html
5/1/09 Brown brings peashooter to poverty war
Getting people from those agencies to better work together is, basically, the mayor's anti-poverty plan. "One of the major 'best practices' we identified is collaboration," Brown
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (May 1, 2009): pB1
4/30/09 Unauthorized Double Dipping
Buffalo Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson appears to be improperly collecting his full annual $40,914 public pension and his roughly $110,000 public salary because City Hall didn't get the necessary waivers allowing him to double dip
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (April 30, 2009): pA1
4/15/09 $30,000 Blackberrys
Buffalo budgeted up to $30,000 last year for the 15 BlackBerrys and three cell phones, part of about $22 million received annually under the Community Development Block Grant program, which is intended to fight blight and poverty. Those using the Black- Berrys and cell phones are employed by the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency and Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp., whose payrolls are partly underwritten by block grant funds.
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/640071.html
2006-2009 Crime Rates in the City Spike
http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-hell-is-happening-in-heights.html
4/14/06, 2/1/09, Silencing Opponents
Did Mayor Byron W. Brown use the Buffalo Police Department to go after his political enemies? Or did Brown and his City Hall aides feel that a series of phony e-mails last year so threatened the mayor and his family's safety that they asked the police to investigate? Either way, the complaint from Brown's office to the police got an unusually quick and thorough response for what would end in, at most, misdemeanor charges. It's been almost three months since six police investigators raided the Breckenridge Avenue home of Syaed Ali, a 24-year-old Buffalo State graduate who runs a small computer business.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (Feb 1, 2009): pA1.
Judith S. Einach, a former mayoral candidate, was told this week she was no longer welcome working at City Hall as an unpaid volunteer after she wrote a critical blog of Byron W. Brown's first 100 days as mayor.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (April 14, 2006): pA1.
12/21/09 Streets Not Plowed During Major Snow Storm
Commanders of Buffalo's snow-busting brigade insist crews did the best they could to keep streets passable after the region was socked by storms Friday and Sunday. But many residents disagreed, including hundreds who called City Hall Sunday night to complain about snow-choked streets.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (Dec 21, 2008)
http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/12/hey-mayor-brown-shovel-this.html
5/16/07, 12/12/08 Empire Zone Funds Used for Luxury Condos and Waterfront Hotels
The idea behind Empire Zones is to promote investment and job creation in economically distressed areas. Brownfields, abandoned factories, inner-city neighborhoods -- places like that. City Hall, however, is using the program to help underwrite a new waterfront hotel in the shadow of million dollar condos. Is this the best use of the program in this, the third poorest city in the nation?
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (Dec 12, 2008)
In an assault on logic and a face-slap to taxpayers, Buffalo is handing a 10-year tax break to owners of new waterfront condos selling for upwards of $600,000. An average tax saving of $100,000 for each of 63 owners means there is $6 million that should be coming City Hall's way but won't.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (May 16, 2007): pB1
7/9/08 City Hall Travel and Take Home Cars Questioned
Lawmakers are reeling over new disclosures that Brown's former planning chief took 38 city-financed trips over 23 months. The administration defended the trips paid for by the city's main development agency, saying then-Strategic Planning Director Timothy E. Wanamaker was conducting important business.
Other lawmakers said they don't think Brown's recent move to eliminate 35 take-home vehicles -- or 41 percent of the take-home fleet -- went far enough. In fact, the chairman of the Council's Finance Committee called on the mayor to stop using take-home vehicles.
"He should find another way to get to and from work," said South Council Member Michael P. Kearns.
Delaware Council Member Michael J. LoCurto said trimming Buffalo's take-home fleet from 85 to 50 is a good start, but he still believes there's more fat. For example, he questioned why the head of the Parking Violations Bureau still has a take-home vehicle.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (July 9, 2008)
7/16/07, 3/7/08, 7/6/08 City Owned Abandoned Homes and Vacant Lots Neglected, Housing Codes not enforced
The two-block-long side street, once home to 50 or 60 families, now has 10 families, five on each block. A few houses scattered here and there, still stand. But most of Ruhland is vacant lots filled with overgrown grass and weeds. "This was a nice, nice street," said Monique Brown, one of the few people still living there. "But now it's the worst street over here." Buffalo's vacant housing crisis, decades in the making, has exploded in recent years and neighborhoods like Ruhland and nearby Harmonia Street are the poster children in the war against it.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (July 6, 2008)
Neighborhood activists used the fake tickets to protest the city's strategy, or lack of it, in dealing with city-owned abandoned housing on the West Side.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (March 7, 2008): pD3.
Residents flooded City Hall with 4,153 complaints about housing code violations in the first five months of the year, and nearly one-third of the problems remain unresolved.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (July 16, 2007): pB3.
http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/09/169-merrimac-buffalo-ny.html
http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/10/nothng-says-welcome-to-buffalo-like.html
7/27/08 City Officials Forced Out
The e-mail arrived Tuesday morning, a day after news broke that Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown had forced Richard M. Tobe to resign:
"Help Wanted -- Buffalo City Hall," read the subject line, setting up its acerbic and dismaying message: "Intelligent, well educated, thoughtful, experienced need not apply."
We hope it's not as bad as that, but it's hard not to see the point. Tobe was one of the bright lights of Brown's administration; a man who brought professionalism, order and a strong sense of ethics to his post of Commissioner of the Department of Economic Development, Permits and Inspection Services. And he got things done.
As of July 4, he will be gone. He's not the first talented leader to be welcomed out of this administration. Robert F. Leach was fired as city technology chief earlier this month, and Leonard A. Matarese resigned as head of human resources in February, after months of disregard by the administration, citing his diminished role as the reason.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (June 27, 2008): pA8
5/2/08 The War on Canisius College
By any measure, Canisius College's annual Spring Quad Party Fridy was a tame affair. There was but one arrest -- a 17-year-old high school student -- and a handful of tickets handed out to participants displaying open containers of alcohol in public.But many students are calling the heightened police presence in the Hamlin Park neighborhood of Canisius -- a multiagency task force that included amored vehicles and camouflaged SWAT teams -- as overkill and unnecessary.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (May 3, 2008): pD3.
4/27/08 Mayor boasts of billions in development, but News analysis shows most is only proposed, and much is taxpayer funded
*Nearly two-thirds of the work Brown cited reflects proposed projects with no assurances of getting built. Some, such as the expansion of the downtown campus of Erie Community College, have been effectively killed.
*Two-thirds of the work that has been completed or is under construction is tax exempt, meaning the projects do not add to the city's tax base and can't help City Hall close its structural budget gap.
*Taxpayers and, to a lesser degree, gamblers, are footing the bill for two-thirds of the development that's been completed or is under construction.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (April 27, 2008): pA1.
4/6/07 Mayor Attempts Cover up of Son’s Hit and Run with the Family SUV
Mayor Byron W. Brown acknowledged today that his 16-year-old son took the family car without permission and then collided with several other vehicles on Feb. 24.
The mayor, who had steadfastly maintained that his son had no involvement in the accidents, told a packed City Hall news conference this morning that his son, Byron, "confessed" to him and his wife after being picked up by a Buffalo police detective and questioned.
But as the incident continued to draw more media attention and became the subject of both a police and insurance investigation, the mayor said he and his wife, Michelle, allowed police to pick up his son for questioning on Thursday. They took a statement, which the mayor then signed, he said.
Brown was accompanied at the press conference by Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson and attorney Arnold B. Gardner, who said he was there as head of the mayor's transition team and as a friend. Gardner rebuked reporters for asking questions about what he said was a family matter, and said he did not believe the situation should result in a "feeding frenzy" by the press.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (April 6, 2007)
After Byron Brown went before media with his police commissioner & blatantly lied about Byron Jr’s late nite demo derby, then punished “Betty T” for complaining about her daughter’s destroyed truck, he set a very low threshold for truth.
http://blogs.artvoice.com/avdaily/2009/01/09/who-is-syaed-ali-and-what-did-he-do-to-make-mayor-byron-brown-so-angry/
9/17/06 Media Gag Orders – Attempts to Restrict/Control Message
While City Hall's still-new leadership simply may not yet be very adept at providing information on breaking news, the public ought not to find that very reassuring for an administration that has made managerial competence its holy grail. And so far, the public has growing reason to doubt the Brown administration's commitment to openness.
After his election last year but before he took office, for example, the mayor-elect flat-out refused to release data that would show whether top aide Steven M. Casey worked for the election campaign at the same time he was charging state taxpayers for his work in Brown's State Senate office. Brown and Casey insisted no laws were broken, but the mayor-elect wouldn't document it. "I'm not going to release the records," he said. "There's no requirement to provide them."
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (Sept 27, 2006): pA8.
7/29/06 Casino Gambling Secretly Promoted
A suit, filed by Citizens for a Better Buffalo, accuses City Hall of operating under a veil of secrecy and failing to comply with state and local laws in approving the casino.
The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (July 29, 2006): pD10
Sycamore Village, Shoshone Village and any other housing development in a City with a 25% vacancy rate
$7,2000,000 taxpayers dollares to build 48 housing units in Sycamore Village. That's at least $1.5 million per house, folks. thepartnership.org/files/pdfs/List%20Buff%20Dev%2012.31.06.pdf
Shosone Village - At a meeting I personally attended, Mayor Brown and Tim Wanamaker declared LRT dead in Buffalo and attempted to sell off the right of ways to their favorite developer(s). Neighbors collected over 1000 sigantures supporting the Bike Trail that had been planned there for years. Construction had even started on the trail before Bonnie Russel and Mayor Brown killled it.
buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2009/04/walking-green-mile.html
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