Tag: City Hall

Dec 16

2025

Transcript: Buffalo Mayor-elect Sean Ryan interview

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  Buffalo Mayor-elect Sean Ryan sat for an interview on Dec. 12 with Investigative Post’s Jim Heaney and Geoff Kelly before a live audience at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. In the course of the 85-minute interview, Ryan responded to questions about a host of issues:  Balancing the city’s finances in the short and long term. Shaking up the culture of the city’s police department. Investing in quality, affordable housing, especially in East Side neighborhoods. Revitalizing downtown through event programming and infrastructure improvements. Improving educational outcomes by lifting kids out of poverty. Taking a lead role in the Kensington and[...]

Posted 4 days ago

Dec 16

2025

Q&A: Buffalo’s incoming Mayor Sean Ryan

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Sean Ryan, Buffalo’s mayor-elect, said in an interview Friday evening that he’s inheriting a City Hall that’s been “hollowed out” by poor management, with a “demoralized” workforce. Before a live audience at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Ryan described vacant offices, a lack of communication within and between departments, unspent state grant money, and deferred maintenance of city infrastructure. And, naturally, the incoming mayor talked about the city’s dire financial straits: a structural budget imbalance of at least $50 million, no savings left to cover shortfalls, and escalating costs — especially overtime — exacerbated by stagnant revenues. “We’ve sort of[...]

Posted 4 days ago

Dec 2

2025

Buffalo’s indifferent response to opioid overdoses

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Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories on the use of opioid settlement funds by government agencies. Part 2 is here. The City of Buffalo has spent less than a third of the almost $6 million in state funding it has received over the past three years to fight the opioid epidemic. During that time, more than 500 people died of overdoses within Buffalo city limits, according to data from the Erie County medical examiner. The victims have been disproportionately Black and Latino. Of the $1.75 million the city has spent, about $500,000 went for equipment and activities[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Nov 26

2025

City to pay $3.3 million to settle Molly’s Pub lawsuits

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Defense attorney Joel Daniels and Jeffrey Basil. Photo courtesy of WKBW 7 News. It’s been more than 11 years since Jeffrey Basil, bar manager of the now-defunct Molly’s Pub on Main Street, pushed William Sager down a flight of stairs, then enlisted off-duty Buffalo police officers working security for the bar to try to cover up what he’d done. Sager, 28, suffered a traumatic brain injury and died on July 31, 2014, after two-and-a-half months in a coma. Basil was sentenced to 18 years in prison for manslaughter in 2015.  The following year, Robert Eloff, one of the off-duty cops,[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Nov 5

2025

Ryan wins, Democrats sweep Cheektowaga

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Erie County Democrats had plenty to celebrate Tuesday night. It was no surprise that the party’s nominee for Buffalo mayor, Sean Ryan prevailed, beating two opponents with more than 70 percent of the vote. Nor was it a surprise that incumbent Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick won reelection, beating Republican and Conservative nominee Christine Czarnik by nearly 18 percentage points. The real wins for Democrats were outside the city. Tonight: Our event on ICE and immigration in WNY In Cheektowaga, the party’s candidates swept every race, winning back the majority on the town council by unseating two Republican and Conservative[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 4

2025

The intersection of neglect and indifference

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The intersection of Niagara and Jersey streets on Buffalo’s Lower West Side is riddled with trash, vacant lots, abandoned buildings and menacing squatters. It’s been going downhill for a decade or more. The only consistency has been the indifference of property owners and the inaction of city officials. Jersey Street resident David Eisenbart used to tend a community garden on a corner of the intersection, but he said that squatters in an abandoned cottage next door made the environment too dangerous. “Every once in a while I would go and mow, just because it got very bad, but the squatters were[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Oct 30

2025

Buffalo to raid “Rainy Day” fund

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The bad news keeps coming for the City of Buffalo’s finances. Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams informed the Common Council this week that the city would need to dip into its Emergency Stabilization Fund — a.k.a. the Rainy Day Fund — in order to balance the books for the fiscal year that ended June 30.  According to the city’s finance commissioner, the shortfall is due to costly settlements to police misconduct lawsuits that hit the city in May.  Lawmakers were told the city will need to use at least $2 million from the fund and perhaps as much as $10 million, according[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Oct 14

2025

Michael Gainer: A political profile

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Michael Gainer moved to Buffalo 20 years ago, just as Byron Brown was campaigning for his first term as mayor — the office Gainer is seeking as an independent candidate in next month’s election.  An educator with construction experience, Gainer had picked up a job doing renovations on a house on Chapin Parkway. One day as he was working, listening to public radio, he heard Brown describe his plan to demolish 10,000 derelict houses over the next decade.  Gainer quickly did some math on a napkin. “It was like half a billion dollars,” he said. “We were going to spend[...]

Posted 2 months ago
Investigative Post