Articles for Geoff Kelly

Aug 30

2023

Contracts for OTB executives a first

Six days before being ousted this spring by the state legislature, Western Regional Off-Track Betting’s board of directors voted to give multi-year contracts to 18 of the agency’s top executives. News outlets, including Investigative Post, first reported that the contracts for CEO Henry Wojtaszek and his lieutenants were “extensions” of existing agreements. But they were not extensions, according to OTB’s response to a Freedom of Information request filed by Investigative Post in July, seeking copies of the executives’ previous contracts.  OTB said it had no previous contracts to provide. And a former OTB chief operating officer — who is suing[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Aug 14

2023

City authority hires Mayor Brown’s son

The Buffalo Sewer Authority hired a new press information officer in April, but neither the agency nor the mayor’s office will talk to reporters about who he is or how much he’s paid. But payroll records and authority meeting minutes tell the story: It’s Mayor Byron Brown’s son. The minutes of the May meeting of authority’s board directors indicate Byron Brown II was hired in April at an annual salary of $62,665. His home address is listed as 14 Blaine, which is the mayor’s house. The authority’s payroll records show Brown II earning $2,161 as his biweekly base pay when[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Aug 8

2023

Transparency, Roswell Park style

Last week, the new chair of Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s board of directors pledged the state-funded center to “an unprecedented … level of transparency and accountability,” after the board voted to make public a critical report it has kept secret for over a year. And yet the board took the vote in executive session — a proceeding closed to the public. When asked why discussion of the matter and the vote were hidden from public view, Leecia Eve, the new board chair, told The Buffalo News, “No particular reason.” That’s what continues to pass for “transparency” at Roswell Park.  Even[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 31

2023

City earning millions on unspent federal relief funds

Mayor Byron Brown’s slow rollout of federal Covid relief funds has infuriated social welfare organizations and Common Council members, who have been waiting two years for the money to start flowing into the community. But the delay has a silver lining, if only for the mayor’s bean-counters: millions of dollars in unexpected interest income. For the budget year that ended June 30, the Brown administration had forecast $100,000 in interest income.  The city’s actual interest earnings, as of July 1: $13.8 million. Delano Dowell, the city’s finance commissioner, confirmed that the windfall is primarily the result of more than $215[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 28

2023

Primary elections: Progressives strike out — again

So much for the revolution.  Hopes ran high among Buffalo progressives after India Walton won the Democratic mayoral primary two years ago, shocking four-term incumbent Byron Brown. Walton lost to Brown’s well-funded and often vicious write-in campaign in the general election, but the coalition of progressives who supported her seemed poised to start winning smaller elections.  Our City Action Buffalo, or OCAB, played a key role in Walton’s mayoral run. The coalition of progressive activists didn’t run candidates for Democratic Party committee seats last year, opting to fight the party establishment from the outside. It endorsed incumbent Jen Mecozzi’s successful[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 21

2023

Big money in Council races

The five contested races for Buffalo Common Council seats have attracted an astonishing amount of money, and for good reasons.  For one, the winners will determine whether Mayor Byron Brown will have a friendly majority on the Council for the last two years of his fifth term, or whether he will continue to spar with a bloc of five (and sometimes six) legislators, as he has for the past four years. Second, they will choose the successor to Darius Pridgen as Council president in January. The Council president wields a great deal of power and would become acting mayor, should[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 19

2023

Clover Group sued for discrimination — again

Another former employee of the Clover Group has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the real estate firm and its president, Michael Joseph, of illegal and racially discriminatory practices. Shane Forrest of Greensboro, North Carolina, says the Williamsville-based company and its executives “intentionally engaged in illegal race-based housing discrimination by refusing to develop housing in or near Black neighborhoods.” In doing so, Forrest claims, the company violated federal law, as well as the laws of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, where Forrest scouted potential sites for Clover’s market-rate senior housing complexes.  Clover owns or operates dozens of such developments in a[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 13

2023

A possible problem with City Hall pay raises

Buffalo’s Common Council voted 5-to-3 Tuesday to give pay raises to themselves, the mayor, the city comptroller and the nine elected members of the city school board. A commission empaneled by the Council in April recommended the 12.63 percent raises for city elected officials and 87 percent pay raises for school board members. The increases will cost taxpayers $254,410 per year.  The new salaries are as follows: Mayor: $178,518.55 — a boost of $20,018.55. Comptroller: $134,592.85 — a boost of $15,092.85. Common Council member: $84,472.50 — a boost of $9,472.50. Board of Education member: $28,000 — a boost of $13,ooo.[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post