Articles for Geoff Kelly

Nov 14

2023

Kennedy has long been spending like a candidate for Higgins seat

State Sen. Tim Kennedy’s name wasn’t on the ballot last week, but he’s been spending campaign money this year like a man running for something. In the first six months of this year, Kennedy’s state Senate campaign committee doled out $426,000, mostly on consultants and political contributions.  That’s $64,000 more than Kennedy spent in the same period in 2022, the last time he was up for reelection.  It’s twice what he spent in the same time frame in 2020, when his name was on the ballot. And it’s nearly 10 times the amount Kennedy’s Democratic colleague, state Sen. Sean Ryan,[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Nov 8

2023

Poloncarz wins big; mixed bag for parties in town races

Election Day was good to Erie County Democrats, especially in the top-ticket races. In the year’s marquee race, Mark Poloncarz beat Republican Chrissy Casilio by a resounding 18 points, winning an unprecedented fourth term as Erie County executive. And Democrats preserved their 7-to-4 majority in the Erie County Legislature, as incumbents in three competitive districts handily fended off Republican and Conservative challengers. In town and village elections, however, the results had a more purplish hue, as Democrats and Republicans alike made gains in areas that once were single-party fiefdoms. “In the suburbs, the towns that are flipping are continuing to[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 24

2023

Mayor’s half-baked paid leave report

Last month, Mayor Byron Brown promised his administration would begin issuing “a comprehensive report encompassing all employees on paid leave” for each biweekly pay period. Investigative Post obtained a copy of the first such report last Thursday, a week after it was distributed to department heads on Oct. 12.  It is hardly comprehensive. The report indicates more than 1,400 city employees across 15 departments — about half the city workforce — took some sort of paid leave during the pay period covering the last two weeks of September. The report identifies the employees by name and department, and identifies the[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 10

2023

Fire clerk still not working, but getting paid

Jill Repman was called back to her job with the Buffalo Fire Department last month after seven and a half years on paid leave that cost taxpayers nearly $600,000. She immediately went on vacation, according to city payroll records.  Repman used four days of her accumulated vacation time to extend the paid Labor Day holiday to a full week. The following Monday, she called in sick.  Then she took a couple personal days, followed by another sick day, followed by another personal day. All told, Repman — formerly known by her married name, Parisi — didn’t work a single day[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 3

2023

Buffalo’s stonewalling city government

Mayor Byron Brown’s administration has long been hostile to requests for public documents from journalists.  In recent months, that hostility has grown worse. Since this summer, the mayor’s law department and several of his commissioners have broken state law time and again in their responses — or failures to respond — to document requests by Investigative Post reporters. Brown’s administration has failed to abide by the state Freedom of Information Law’s most basic requirements to respond to requests in a timely manner.  The city’s top attorney, Corporation Counsel Cavette Chambers, has refused to answer our reporters’ formal appeals when Brown’s[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 27

2023

Lawsuits have commenced in blaze that killed firefighter

The owner of 743 Main Street — the site of the fire that killed Buffalo firefighter Jason Arno in March — is suing the contractor that investigators blame for starting the blaze. The plaintiff is 743 Main Street LLC, a limited liability company with the same address as Avalon Development, former U.S. Rep. Chris Jacobs’ development company. Jacobs used the LLC to purchase the building in December 2022 for $1.3 million.  The defendant is JP Contracting of WNY, whose workers used a propane roofing torch and a leaf blower to melt ice on the exterior masonry of the building the[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 26

2023

How many City Hall employees being paid not to work?

The comptroller’s office has launched an investigation to determine how many city employees are on paid leave, why and for how long, and how much it costs taxpayers, according to the city’s chief auditor, who testified Tuesday before the Common Council’s Civil Service Committee. The comptroller’s inquiry is a response to Investigative Post’s report on Jill Repman, formerly Jill Parisi, an administrative assistant for the Buffalo Fire Department who was on paid leave for seven and half years. The city has paid Repman nearly $600,000 since suspending her in 2016, when she was accused of tampering with the department’s payroll[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 25

2023

City to pay $255k to victims of police raid

The city of Buffalo is poised to pay more than a quarter-million dollars to a family whose Parkside home was raided by a police SWAT team hunting for crack cocaine.  Officers armed with guns and a no-knock search warrant found no drugs at the home of Maisha Drayton, then a senior director of staff development at the Evergreen Association, a nonprofit health care organization. Neither she nor her two children nor her husband, Trevor, who wasn’t home when police broke through the door shortly after 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 11, 2014, had any criminal history.  The city law department last[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post