Tag: Mayor Byron Brown

Nov 2

2021

Voters speak out on Brown, Walton

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This story was written by Jim Heaney based on interviews by Investigative Post reporters with 120 City of Buffalo voters. The interviews were conducted at 19 polling places, located in all nine Common Council districts. Three-quarters of the interviews took place on election day, the balance during early voting last week. Participating staff included Layne Dowdall, Mark Scheer, Phil Gambini, Geoff Kelly and Nancy Webb. The election for mayor of Buffalo was not a Tweedledum vs. Tweedledee affair. Byron Brown and India Walton expressed sharp differences of opinions on the issues and about each other. Their supporters did likewise in[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 27

2021

Obfuscation from the Brown camp

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Tuesday, The Buffalo News reported the departure of Byron Brown’s campaign manager, Conor Hurley, earlier this month. Hurley told The News that Brown’s deputy mayor, Betsey Ball — who ran the mayor’s primary campaign — would “carry the mayor across the finish line” as next Tuesday’s vote drew closer. Ball was blamed by many — Brown donor Carl Paladino, among them — for Brown’s primary loss in June. We decided we’d better find out if Ball was taking time off from her job at City Hall to call the shots on the campaign. So, we reached out to the mayor’s[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 25

2021

Buffalo’s beleaguered municipal finances

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 The story of Buffalo’s municipal finances under Mayor Byron Brown is divided into two chapters. Chapter One covers the five years before the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority — the city’s control board, formed in 2003 to keep the city from going bankrupt — relinquished its oversight power. In the beginning of Brown’s tenure, which began in 2006, the control board helped the city balance budgets and build up millions in reserves. Chapter Two covers the decade since the control board went “soft” in 2011. It’s a very different tale. Since 2011, Brown has proposed — and year after year[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 13

2021

The keys to a successful write-in campaign

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Successful write-in campaigns for elected office are few and far between. But candidates occasionally find a way to win, and election experts say there is a formula for success. The keys include name recognition, fundraising capability, concerted voter education campaigns, and strong turn-out-the-vote efforts. Lisa Murkowski used these strategies to retain her U.S. Senate seat in Alaska in 2010. Mike Duggan did likewise when he won the race for mayor of Detroit in 2013. Here in Buffalo, Mayor Byron Brown, waging a write-in campaign against Democratic nominee India Walton, has at least some of those advantages going for him. As[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 12

2021

Buffalo remains an impoverished city

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Buffalo ranked as the nation’s second-poorest city when Byron Brown took office in 2006.  The following year, the mayor declared that his administration was working hard to “bring people into the mainstream of Buffalo’s economy” while “taking steps” to reverse the “alarming numbers.”  Fifteen years later, the numbers haven’t changed. Buffalo’s poverty rate in 2006 was 29.9 percent.  In 2019, the last year for which figures are available, it stood at 28.8 percent. Put another way: Buffalo is no longer the nation’s second poorest city. It’s now the third poorest. Even more disconcerting: Buffalo’s childhood poverty rate stands at 43.4[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 22

2021

Brown’s tepid support of Buffalo schools

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Editor’s note: This is a second in a series of stories assessing the state of the city, 15 years after Bryon Brown took office. Our first story dealt with City Hall’s enforcement of its fair housing laws. Today; Buffalo public schools. Buffalo schools were plagued by poor attendance and low student achievement when Byron Brown took office 15 years ago. Not much has changed since then. The mayor is not directly responsible for the school district. That falls on the nine members of its elected Board of Education and the superintendent they supervise. But many big-city mayors have used the[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 13

2021

Fair housing complaints bypass City Hall

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Editor’s note: This is a first in a series of stories on the state of the city. Our in-depth reports on key issues will continue through late October. Today’s story assesses City Hall’s track record of enforcing its fair housing law. For years housing advocates in Buffalo were frustrated by the city’s failure to enforce its fair housing law.  Now, with better options in county and state laws, those advocates are sidestepping the city entirely. Representatives from the nonprofit Housing Opportunities Made Equal said they saw some effort from the city shortly after Investigative Post reported in 2018 on the[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 2

2021

Campaign Notes

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Welcome to Campaign Notes, an election blog we update daily with news and intelligence on upcoming elections, including the mayoral race. Geoff Kelly, our government and politics reporter, writes most of the entries, with contributions from other Investigative Post reporters. Email Geoff with tips. Thursday, Nov. 4, 11:50 a.m. Heaney assesses election with with Susan Arbetter How to explain Byron Brown’s landslide victory over India Walton? Susan Arbetter, host of Capital Tonight, put that question to Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney and here’s what he had to say: Investigative Post, in a previous story, identified four key strategies successful write-in candidates[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post

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