Articles for Geoff Kelly

Sep 23

2023

Monday Morning Read

Read on for nuggets you may have missed, and subscribe to WeeklyPost for a heads up every Sunday. The editors of Time magazine inveigh against “alarming efforts to politicize and defund libraries,” particularly by right-wing activists. The Time magazine piece reflects the fears Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Director John Spears spoke of in a recent Buffalo News article, saying “If people think this couldn’t happen here, they’re wrong.” In an earlier interview with Investigative Post, Spears spoke of the importance of libraries in society, suggesting that they are one of the few remaining community spaces people can use freely. Time’s editors[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 20

2023

Erie County sheriff wants $10 million helicopter

Erie County Sheriff John Garcia wants to double his department’s helicopter fleet with a new chopper that would cost more than $10 million. “It’s a matter of safety,” Undersheriff William Cooley told Investigative Post in justifying a new Airbus H135 helicopter that would take two years to build and outfit. “We see an absolute need for a new machine.” The sheriff’s office boasts that its current helicopter helps nab suspected car thieves and controls traffic at Buffalo Bills games.  The department says that its 22-year-old chopper, often grounded for maintenance and repairs, has saved lives. The department once considered replacing[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 19

2023

Council member requests audit of workers on paid leave

A Buffalo legislator wants to know how and why a clerk in the city’s fire department was kept on paid administrative leave for seven and half years, collecting nearly $600,000 not to work. Fillmore District Council Member Mitch Nowakowski also wants the city’s comptroller to find out how many similar situations are hidden in the city’s payroll. Nowakowski, chair of the Council’s Civil Service Committee, filed a resolution Monday asking Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams to perform an audit to find out how many city employees are being paid to stay at home, why, and for how long — and what the[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 15

2023

Judge throws out counts in fatal police shooting lawsuit

A federal judge has dismissed several counts against the Buffalo Police Department and two officers involved in the 2017 fatal shooting of Jose Hernandez-Rossy.  Left intact in a lawsuit filed by Margarita Rossy, the dead man’s mother, are claims that police improperly used lethal force after violating Hernandez-Rossy’s rights against unreasonable search and seizure when they pulled him over on suspicion of smoking marijuana while driving.  Otherwise, U.S. District Court Judge William Skretny on Sept. 5 threw out claims that police targeted Hernandez-Rossy, 26, based on race and that the disciplinary history of Officer Justin Tedesco, who pulled the trigger,[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 14

2023

City Hall clerk paid not to work

In February 2016, the City of Buffalo accused a clerk in the fire department of tampering with the payroll in order to pad her checks. Since then the former Jill Parisi — now appearing on city payroll records under her maiden name, Jill Repman — has collected well over a half million dollars while on paid administrative leave, awaiting a resolution to the disciplinary charges against her. For six of those seven-and-a-half years, she has held a second job in the private sector, managing payroll for a local healthcare company. According to the city’s law department, there was never any[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 7

2023

What’s news in government and politics

A digest of noteworthy reporting — some local, some state and some national — from the last week in government and politics:   Campaign finance shenanigans New York Focus reports on a new dodge for candidates who feel constrained by the state’s limits on campaign donations: Accept services from political consultants as loans, then never pay them back.  New York Focus highlights an example from Rochester, but Byron Brown’s 2021 mayoral campaign pulled the same trick. Brown for Buffalo listed more than $38,000 owed to the Atlanta law firm that represented the campaign in court as an “outstanding loan or[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 6

2023

Political domino theories

This past summer, speculation has run amok regarding exit strategies for longtime elected officials:  Will SUNY Buffalo State hire Mayor Byron Brown, or perhaps Congressman Brian Higgins, as its next president?  How about Erie Community College? That financially beleaguered institution, too, is seeking new leadership, having run through three presidents — one of them carrying the prefix “interim” for two years — since former Congressman Jack Quinn left the post in 2017. Or perhaps Higgins, who began his 10th term in January, will land instead as the head of Shea’s Performing Arts Center, which lost its president last fall, amid[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 4

2023

OTB chief snubs Erie County comptroller

Last week, the president and CEO of Western Regional Off-Track Betting instructed three of his top executives to ignore inquiries from the Erie County comptroller. Erie County is one of the 17 municipalities that own OTB, an agency beset by allegations that it has misused public money. Since last summer, Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick has made numerous inquiries into the agency’s financial practices, including its provision of expensive health-care coverage to board members, its practice of doling out tickets to sporting events and concerts to friends and family, and the particulars of the development of a new hotel at[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post