Articles for Geoff Kelly

Dec 27

2024

Geoff Kelly’s very busy year

What did I do in 2024? For starters, I began writing a weekly newsletter called PoliticalPost, jam-packed with items about local government and politics — patronage hires, electoral maneuvers, the misbehavior of public officials, and much more. It’s free every Wednesday morning. (Though donations to support our nonprofit investigative journalism center are always appreciated.) If you don’t get it already, you should sign up for it. If you’ve been a subscriber from the get-go, you found out in January — six months before anyone else — that Byron Brown was looking to ditch Buffalo City Hall for the job he[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Dec 24

2024

OTB accuses whistleblower of ‘public smear campaign’

Western Regional Off-Track Betting’s Batavia Downs. Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp has filed a counterclaim against a former executive turned whistleblower who maintains he was fired after he agreed to cooperate with investigations into alleged wrongdoing at the public benefit corporation. OTB’s counterclaim, filed Nov. 27, alleges that former Chief Operating Officer Michael Nolan breached his “fiduciary duty and duties of loyalty and confidentiality” to the organization while engaging in a “public smear campaign” designed to draw negative attention to WROTB and its outgoing CEO and President Henry Wojtaszek. The countersuit accuses Nolan of conspiring with his attorney, Steve Cohen,[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Dec 23

2024

Scanlon campaign violated ethics laws

Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon. Chris Scanlon, Buffalo’s acting mayor, hasn’t yet formally declared his candidacy for a full four-year term, but already he’s stumbled over laws prohibiting incumbents from using their offices to promote their campaigns. Scanlon last Thursday held a fundraiser — checks payable to his campaign committee — at developer Doug Jemal’s Seneca One building in downtown Buffalo. Invitations to the fundraiser were mailed in envelopes that used the mayor’s second-floor office for a return address. That’s a violation of local, state and federal laws that prohibit public employees from using their offices for political purposes. Investigative Post[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Dec 4

2024

Buffalo’s financial hole gets deeper

Ray Nosworthy, Buffalo’s new acting finance commissioner, had a rough first day on the job. His first task Tuesday morning was to tell the Common Council’s Finance Committee that, one quarter into its financial year, the city was staring at a nearly $18 million deficit. He also told lawmakers that Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon is demanding 10 percent cuts in expenditures from all city department heads in next year’s budget. Nosworthy said the “unexpected” $18 million deficit was the result of the city’s depleted savings. The Council in June adopted a spending plan that had a $40 million imbalance between[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 3

2024

Buffalo’s ‘power structure is the problem’

Government policies pushed by the region’s traditional power brokers — real estate developers, bankers, law firms and other business interests — have been “a disaster for the people of Buffalo,” a new report concludes. Tax abatements and subsidies are contributing to “a deepening commercial real estate crisis” downtown, according to the report, released last month by Our City Action Buffalo, a progressive community advocacy group that is a frequent critic of the city’s elected officials. Opposition to affordable housing projects has exacerbated the city’s poverty problems, according to the report. What’s more, Buffalo is staring at a fiscal crisis engendered[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 27

2024

Overtime for Buffalo’s city employees through the roof

Despite the city’s worsening finances, Buffalo’s public employees — mostly cops and firefighters — are racking up overtime pay like never before. Last fiscal year, no fewer than 26 employees earned more than $100,000 in overtime. Another 270 pocketed over $50,000 in overtime, while 400 more took home at least $20,000. The result: a $22 million hole in the city budget that wrapped up in June. Those figures come from a report issued last week by Buffalo Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams, whose staff reviewed five years of payroll records to document the burgeoning cost of overtime and its impact on the[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 14

2024

How Erie County voted for president

The Democratic presidential ticket’s margin of victory in Erie County was provided by voters in the City of Buffalo. Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz won the county by 42,243 votes, according to the current count. She won Buffalo by 46,765, snagging more than three-quarters of the ballots cast by city voters. The Democrats also won by lesser but still substantial margins in the towns of Amherst, Tonawanda and Aurora, and squeaked out victories in Cheektowaga and Lackawanna. The rest of the county registered various shades of red, ranging from pinkish communities like Orchard Park, Hamburg and[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 13

2024

Cheektowaga’s faded blue electorate

As goes Cheektowaga, so goes the nation, former Buffalo News political reporter Bob McCarthy likes to say. The McCarthy maxim held true in 2016, when Cheektowaga voters broke by the thinnest of margins for Republican Donald Trump, and in 2020, when they favored Democrat Joe Biden. This year the results were mixed: The Democratic presidential candidate won the town but lost the race nationwide. However, Republicans made rare and important gains in local races. Unofficial results show Democrat Kamala Harris carrying Cheektowaga by about 4 percentage points, or just shy of 1,700 votes. Her margin of victory in the town[...]

Posted 2 months ago