Jul 18
2024
Mayor’s staff growing in numbers and cost
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When Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown prepared his first city budget, he allowed for eight employees in his office, including himself. He had a communications staff of one.
Those jobs were scheduled to cost taxpayers $571,806, not including healthcare and retirement benefits. The actual cost was less — just under $500,000 — because he didn’t fill all the positions.
This budget year, which began July 1, the mayor’s budget allows for 19 staffers. The Office of Communications and Intergovernmental Affairs has grown to seven budgeted positions.
Combined, the salaries for those 26 jobs add up to $2,453,665.
That’s nearly three times the people and, adjusted for inflation, nearly three times the cost.
Much of that expansion has occurred since the city’s state-imposed financial control board relinquished oversight of city budgets and hiring in 2012. In that time, the Brown administration has spent down $109 million in reserve funds in order to balance budgets, according to the city comptroller — the result of rising expenses, static revenues and the mayor’s reluctance to increase property taxes. For the past three years the mayor has used federal American Rescue Plan dollars to balance his budgets, while adding six job titles to his staff.
In May, with the end of federal pandemic aid on the horizon, Brown proposed a 9 percent increase in the city’s tax levy and the use of nearly $15 million more in reserve funds to balance this year’s budget. City legislators later reduced the tax hike to just over 4 percent.
Investigative Post analyzed city budget documents and payroll records to track the growth of the mayor’s office over Brown’s five terms in office. We focused on the mayor’s executive staff and communications office. We left out of our analysis divisions of the executive branch — the Office of Strategic Planning, the Division of Citizen Services, the Traffic Violations Agency — with discrete functions beyond supporting the mayor in his duties.
Among our findings:
- Most of the growth has occurred in the last decade, during which Brown’s office has more than doubled in size and cost.
- In 2016, as Brown prepared to run for a fourth term in office, the mayor’s communications team grew from two people to 10.
- Since winning a fifth term in 2021, the mayor has added six more positions to his staff at a budgeted cost of nearly $800,000.
- Every year except 2019, Brown’s spending on staff has come in under budget — by as little as $4,000 and as much as $230,000 — thanks to the city’s practice of creating positions but not filling them.
Our City Action Buffalo, a good government group, said it supports “a robust public sector along with fiscally responsible use of public resources and taxpayer dollars.” OCAB board member Amber Powers told Investigative Post by email that the group believes city departments “should be fully staffed and doing efficient and effective work for the residents of Buffalo.”
“The problem we have with the Brown Administration is that certain offices, like those focused on public relations, are vastly overstaffed, while basic public health concerns like lead abatement and fluoride in water are ignored, and snow removal is abysmal compared to our first-ring suburban neighbors,” Powers said.
Michael DeGeorge, the mayor’s director of communications and intergovernmental relations, told Investigative Post that only five of the seven positions budgeted for his office this year are currently filled.
He cited “the changing aspects of communications” to explain the growth of his team over the years, noting the demands of digital platforms and social media.
DeGeorge said some of the recent growth in the mayor’s staff can be attributed to the addition of an Office of Diversity, Opportunity and Inclusion, which he said employs five people. At least two jobs in the mayor’s office moved from other departments, as well.
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“In the last almost 20 years the city has changed with economic and population growth,” DeGeorge said in a text message. DeGeorge said the mayor created the diversity and inclusion positions “to address those changing needs.”
U.S. Census data show Buffalo’s population grew by about 18,000 people between 2010 and 2020, to about 278,000. The same data show the city’s population in 2006 at about 276,000.
Common Councilmember Mitch Nowakowski, who chairs the Council’s Finance Committee, agreed some of the growth in the mayor’s staff was inevitable.
“In fairness, when the mayor was elected, we were in the times of a hard control board, layoffs, reductions in employees, and social media was barely off the ground,” Nowakowski told Investigative Post via email. “But, have Council members in recent years questioned those figures and positions? Yes.”
The ever-expanding executive
In 2006, Brown had two special assistants and an executive assistant, as well as an administrative assistant and a “telephone operator” — which is civil service language for a secretary-receptionist.
He also had a deputy mayor, Steve Casey, who had a special assistant of his own.
The mayor’s communications team comprised one person: Peter Cutler, who made $79,423 as director of communications and intergovernmental relations. Cutler held the same role in the administration of Brown’s predecessor.
In 2007 Brown added two staff members to his office: another deputy mayor and a “research manager,” according to budget documents.
The year after that, Brown added two more job titles: executive director of the Buffalo Arts Commission and an “Inspector General.”
The latter, with a proposed salary of $80,000, was the mayor’s response to a scandal that cost former Public Works Commissioner Joe Giambra and his successor Dan Kreuz their jobs. Both were found to have accepted trips and other gifts from city contractors.
The inspector general was meant to sniff out waste, fraud and corruption in city hall. But there was a dispute between the Council, the mayor and the city comptroller about who should appoint the inspector general. No one was ever hired for the position and it was dropped from the budget the following year.
As for the executive director of the Buffalo Arts Commission, that’s a position that existed elsewhere in the city budget before the mayor brought it into his office, where it has remained ever since.
For the next few years, the mayor’s office held steady at a dozen employees, though their salaries continued to grow. DeGeorge replaced Cutler in 2010 at $91,374 — a significant raise. In 2011, DeGeorge got an assistant and the cost of his office shot up to $172,745.
In 2012, the city’s state-imposed financial control board shifted into an advisory, or “soft,” role. That gave the mayor greater control of city budgeting and staffing levels than he had enjoyed during his first two terms in office.
The next big jump in Brown’s staff came in 2016, the year before a mayoral election. That year the communications office grew from two budgeted positions to 10.
In addition to DeGeorge and his assistant, the communications staff added a digital communications officer, a photographer, a graphic designer and two public communications officers. Those and other job titles were budgeted at nearly $600,000.
Not all the jobs were filled, however, and the actual cost of DeGeorge’s office was just under $500,000 — which was still double the cost of the communications staff the previous year. Since then, the number of people on DeGeorge’s staff has decreased, though the cost of their salaries has not, ranging between $500,000 and $600,000 each year.
Also in 2016, the mayor added a chief diversity officer to his budget. In 2022, he added an inclusionary compliance officer. That same year he moved the director of the Office of New Americans from the law department to his budget.
In the current budget year, the mayor’s office includes the following job titles and salaries:
- Mayor: $178,518
- Two deputy mayors: $148,000 each
- Chief of staff: $138,000
- Deputy chief of staff: $130,000
- Chief diversity officer: $124,676
- Executive assistant to the mayor: $107,441
- Director, government relations and special projects: $99,500
- Two confidential aides to the mayor: $81,861 each
- Director, Office of New Americans: $77,250
- Two special assistants to the mayor: $75,467 and $55,060
- Executive director, Buffalo Arts Commission: $70,071
- Inclusionary compliance officer: $69,365
- Diversity and inclusion coordinator, Americans with Disabilities Act advocate: $65,661
- Telephone operator: $47,592
- Account clerk/typist: $46,336
- Administrative aide: $46,336
DeGeorge, who recently was named senior advisor to the mayor — on top of his communications role — will make $124,676 this year. The mayor’s salary in 2006 was $105,000. That was raised to $158,500 in 2019 and to its current level last year.
Council costs up, too — but less so
Nowakowski, the Finance Committee chair, noted that he is in part responsible for the new ADA advocate position in the mayor’s office this budget year.
“I fought to create this position, when it was discovered the city was out of federal compliance,” Nowakowski said. “It is my strong belief that visibility matters and that someone living with a disability should hold this position to advance city policies, procedures and advise on matters to city departments on the needs of the disability community.”
Nowakowski and his fellow legislators also pushed for the creation of an emergency services manager position last year, in response to the 2022 Christmas blizzard that killed 47 people. That position technically exists within the fire department, not on the mayor’s executive staff.
“In my view, the creation of these two positions are to adapt to the needs of our time and provide a benefit to the advancement of the city,” Nowakowski said.
Council members frequently have questioned the addition of new executive jobs during past budget cycles, according to Nowakowski. He said the administration’s response is always the same: We’ll cut jobs if the Council does the same.
Indeed, Council staff and its cost has grown since 2006, though not nearly at the rate of the mayor’s office.
The city charter allows each of the nine city legislators two full-time staffers in their offices. Those 27 jobs are budgeted to cost a little over $2 million in the coming year. There are also 14 budgeted positions on the Council’s central staff, at a cost of just under $1 million.
Total salaries: $3,037,270.
In 2006, legislators and their immediate staff cost a little over $1 million in salaries. There were nine members of central staff then at a cost of just over $500,000.
Total salaries: $1,596,215.
Adjusted for inflation, that’s an increase in cost of 22.6 percent — nowhere near the tripling of costs and personnel in the mayor’s office.
“When questioned, the argument would be flipped back on the Council during negotiations: ‘So, what positions will the Council be cutting?’” Nowakowski said.
“On face value a fair question, but when you dig deeper, it isn't truly comparable.”
