Articles for Geoff Kelly

Feb 19

2020

Lead poisoning plan missing key elements

In January, the City of Buffalo launched its long-awaited pilot program to combat lead poisoning. The pilot program is small — much smaller than the problem in Buffalo, which has one of the highest rates of children afflicted with lead poisoning in the nation.  And, as it stands now, the program lacks funding mechanisms to make it bigger.  Furthermore, a key element is still missing: a new local law that will allow city inspectors access to the interiors of the city’s abundant rental singles and doubles in poor neighborhoods. Those dwellings comprise 80 percent of the city’s highest-risk properties. Still,[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 18

2020

More Buffalo cop cars on the way

The Buffalo Common Council today approved two measures that will bring 51 new patrol cars to the city’s decrepit fleet. The Council, without comment or debate, approved a contract to lease 31 new police cars from Enterprise Fleet Management for roughly the cost of purchasing 13 cars outright. The Council also approved borrowing $1 million to purchase 20 new police cars. The cost to the city in the first year of the three-year lease period is $675,000 — about what the city appropriated for the purchase of police cars in the current budget.  In the second and third years, the cost[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 4

2020

Police shooting costs Buffalo $4.5 million

 On Tuesday, Buffalo’s Common Council authorized one of the largest lawsuit settlements in the city’s history: $4.5 million to Wilson Morales, who was shot by Buffalo police officers in the early morning of June 24, 2012, after a car chase on the city’s East Side. The bullet that struck Morales, then a 17-year-old student at WNY Maritime Charter School, instantly paralyzed him from the chest down. “It’s been hard,” Morales told Investigative Post in the offices of Dolce Panepinto, the law firm that handled the lawsuit, after the Council approved the settlement. “Mostly depression, loss of friends, and pain,”[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 1

2020

Police brass overstate availability of patrol cars

 Buffalo police officers have a lot fewer cars at their disposal to respond to 911 calls than their commissioner would have the public believe, union officials say. Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood told the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee on Jan. 14 that the department’s dilapidated fleet had 134 working patrol cars available to answer calls. The actual number is less than 50, said Mark Goodspeed, vice president of the Police Benevolent Association. Goodspeed performs a regular survey of working patrol cars assigned to the city’s five police districts. On the evening of Jan. 14, the same day Lockwood[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jan 15

2020

Geoff Kelly talks politics on ‘Press Pass

Jay Moran interviewed Geoff Kelly, Investigative Post’s political reporter, on this week’s edition of Press Pass on WBFO. Kelly discussed two upcoming elections involving the state Senate seat being vacated by Chris Jacobs and the Congressional seat that opened up when Chris Collins resigned.  

Posted 5 years ago

Jan 14

2020

Buffalo cops still waiting on patrol cars

Investigative Post reported in August that the Buffalo Police Department was woefully short of working patrol cars. The city’s failure to purchase new cars regularly, deferred maintenance and inadequate staffing at the department’s garage had led to a situation the Police Benevolent Association president John Evans described as “dire.” Among the resulting problems: officers without access to vehicles to respond to 911 calls in a timely fashion. Almost six months later, Buffalo’s patrol officers are still waiting for relief. On Tuesday, members of the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee learned the arrival of new cars is still many months away.[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Dec 18

2019

Mychajliw’s muddied campaign finances

Stefan Mychajliw may have a federal campaign finance law problem.  Should the Erie County comptroller ever officially declare his candidacy for New York’s 27th Congressional District seat, he could face fines and sanctions from the Federal Election Commission for the way he’s financed his undeclared but vigorous campaign thus far. Mychajliw insists he is not currently a candidate for the 27th Congressional District seat. “I’m not a candidate for anything right now,” Mychajliw told Investigative Post in a recent phone interview.  And yet he acts like a candidate for the 27th District seat. He sounds like one, too. And he’s[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Nov 25

2019

Buffalo’s complacent Control Board

 The Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority, better known as the control board, costs city and state taxpayers more than $1 million a year. Its job, since it was imposed by the state in 2003, has been to keep an eye on Buffalo’s finances.  But during the past eight years it has done nothing to stop Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council as they’ve drained the city of more than $100 million in reserves, leaving City Hall with nothing in the bank to close budget gaps.  In six of the last eight budget cycles, the Brown administration has depleted its[...]

Posted 6 years ago
Investigative Post