Articles for Geoff Kelly

Jul 31

2022

Feds investigate City Hall (again)

Federal investigators are looking into allegations that City of Buffalo employees, including police officers, broke federal law last year while campaigning for Mayor Byron Brown. Investigative Post acquired two emails last week concerning the investigation. The first, dated June 12 of this year, is a formal complaint to the U.S Office of Special Counsel, alleging “officers of the Buffalo Police Department … appear to have engaged in political activity while on duty or while represented as police officers.” The second, dated July 11, is an email from a law clerk at the Office of Special Counsel to the author of[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 27

2022

Byron Brown’s campaign debts

Mayor Byron Brown’s campaign committee owes vendors more than $185,000 for goods and services they provided to his re-election effort last year. That’s according to the committee’s latest filing with the state Board of Elections, which covers all financial activity between Jan. 15 and July 11. Brown for Buffalo owes more than three times as much as it has cash on hand, according to that report. It owes more than four times what the mayor reported raising over the past six months. The mayor’s campaign committee lists the debts as “outstanding liabilities/loans,” but most appear to be unpaid invoices. According[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 20

2022

Hardwick demands answers from OTB

For the first time, one of the governments that owns the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. is demanding answers about the agency’s management practices and business dealings. Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick sent two letters this week to Henry Wojtaszek, OTB’s president and CEO. One letter posed a series of questions about the agency’s practice of providing top-shelf health insurance to board members, despite repeated warnings that doing so is impermissible. It’s a subject Investigative Post has covered extensively, in more than two dozen stories published over four years. Hardwick’s other letter raised questions about OTB’s sale of land to[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 19

2022

Council adopts new district lines

On Tuesday, Buffalo’s Common Council voted unanimously to adopt a redistricting plan that community groups and activists have spent the past two months trying to stop. The new district maps comprise an amended version of a redistricting plan unveiled in May by a citizens commission whose members were appointed by the Council and Mayor Byron Brown. The plan — which largely leaves intact the gerrymandering of a decade ago — will now be sent to Brown. The mayor must hold a public hearing on the matter. He then can approve or veto the plan, or allow it to pass into[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 11

2022

City Hall puts off day of financial reckoning

The COVID pandemic has been very good for the City of Buffalo’s finances. Pandemic relief funds from the federal American Rescue Plan have been a tremendous boon. You can see that money at work right now in city streets and parks. It’s going to help pay for water and sewer projects, as well as micro-loans to small businesses and the expansion of broadband internet access. It helped keep poor city residents in their homes. Most important for city government has been revenue replacement money — cash the federal government sent to make up for revenue the city claims it lost[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 5

2022

Council lost, activists take redistricting rudder

Last week Our City Action Buffalo — an organization of good government activists — scored two quick victories in a battle with the Common Council over redistricting. First, Our City Action successfully packed a June 28 public hearing with speakers, more than 100 of them. All opposed the Council’s redistricting plan, first unveiled in May by a commission that did its work largely behind closed doors. The Council’s favored plan largely leaves intact district lines that were gerrymandered 11 years ago to benefit incumbents. The speakers were unanimous in their support for an alternative redistricting plan created by Our City[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 29

2022

City Hall transgressions cost taxpayers

On Wednesday, the Buffalo Common Council approved $510,000 in payments to settle nine personal injury claims filed against the city. A third of those lawsuits were against Buffalo police, whose missteps frequently cost the taxpayers big: almost $12 million in one five-year period, according to an Investigative Post analysis. But cops aren’t the only city employees who mess up on the job. The biggest payout approved yesterday by the Council’s Claims Committee was $225,000 to Freddie Ingram. In November 2018, a Buffalo parking inspector, Jumanne Pitts, backed his city-owned vehicle the wrong way down a street and collided with Ingram’s[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 28

2022

Council catches hell on redistricting plan

The first public hearing on a redistricting plan for Buffalo’s Common Council attracted just two members of the public. Only one spoke. Tuesday night’s public hearing was another story. More than 100 people attended the 5 p.m. session — 60 or more in person, another 40 or so online, according to Delaware District Council Member Joel Feroleto, who chaired the hearing. At least half the attendees spoke. All used the three minutes allotted to them to disparage the plan drafted by the Council’s appointed Citizens Commission on Reapportionment, first unveiled at a May 18 public hearing. That May 18 hearing[...]

Posted 3 years ago