Tag: Mayor Byron Brown

Mar 22

2022

Lucrative no-bid deal for Brown donor

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For the last three years, Buffalo’s comptroller has been asking Mayor Byron Brown’s administration to justify a $1 million, no-bid contract awarded to developer William Huntress.  Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams’s office has twice audited the current lease for the city’s records storage facility, given to Huntress’s Acquest Development in 2018.  Both times, according to the comptroller, the Brown administration has failed to document its decision to forgo legally required competitive bidding procedures. “Documentation of the transaction should be sufficient to assure compliance with the applicable laws and policies, which require the best value is chosen,” the comptroller reported in its first[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Mar 15

2022

Brown cited for election law violations

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Last August, Peter Rizzo sent the state elections board a detailed analysis alleging Mayor Byron Brown had violated a number of campaign finance laws. First, Rizzo wrote, the mayor’s campaign failed to identify the individual owners of limited liability corporations, as required by state law. Rizzo identified “more than 100 campaign contributions from limited liability companies during the current election cycle” which were improperly documented. Second, Rizzo said, the mayor’s campaign accepted more money from several individuals and corporations than the law allowed.  These over-contributions were in some cases obfuscated by other filing failures and violations, Rizzo wrote. His complaint[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Mar 3

2022

City Hall light on lawyers

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Newly appointed Corporation Counsel Cavette Chambers began her tenure as the city’s chief lawyer by asking for more money to pay outside firms to represent the city in court. On Feb. 17, Chambers emailed a formal request for the law department’s $3.2 million budget to be topped up with an extra $300,000 for “outside counsel, court-ordered judgments, transcripts and other legal costs.”  The money was necessary, she wrote, for the department to handle its bills and its caseload “through the remainder of the fiscal year,” which ends June 30. The budget line Chambers names is for “Legal Services.” In the[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Nov 10

2021

Heaney discusses mayor’s race on ‘Pressroom

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Jim Heaney fielded questions from David Lombardo, host of The Capitol Pressroom, about the race between Byron Brown and India Walton. Heaney offered an assessment on the strengths and shortcomings of each candidate’s campaign. Give a listen.  

Posted 4 years ago

Nov 3

2021

Modest turnout for Buffalo’s mayoral election

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The contest between India Walton and Byron Brown looked like it could be close. It wasn’t.  Though it’ll be a while before the write-in votes for Brown are validated and absentee ballots are counted, the outcome is clear: Brown won a fifth term resoundingly, according to unofficial returns from the Erie County Board of Elections. The first hotly contested general election for Buffalo mayor in 16 years — a showdown between ideologies and personalities, drawing national attention and massive infusions of campaign money to both sides — was predicted to drive massive turnout in the city.  It didn’t. In all[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Nov 2

2021

Voters speak out on Brown, Walton

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This story was written by Jim Heaney based on interviews by Investigative Post reporters with 120 City of Buffalo voters. The interviews were conducted at 19 polling places, located in all nine Common Council districts. Three-quarters of the interviews took place on election day, the balance during early voting last week. Participating staff included Layne Dowdall, Mark Scheer, Phil Gambini, Geoff Kelly and Nancy Webb. The election for mayor of Buffalo was not a Tweedledum vs. Tweedledee affair. Byron Brown and India Walton expressed sharp differences of opinions on the issues and about each other. Their supporters did likewise in[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Oct 27

2021

Obfuscation from the Brown camp

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Tuesday, The Buffalo News reported the departure of Byron Brown’s campaign manager, Conor Hurley, earlier this month. Hurley told The News that Brown’s deputy mayor, Betsey Ball — who ran the mayor’s primary campaign — would “carry the mayor across the finish line” as next Tuesday’s vote drew closer. Ball was blamed by many — Brown donor Carl Paladino, among them — for Brown’s primary loss in June. We decided we’d better find out if Ball was taking time off from her job at City Hall to call the shots on the campaign. So, we reached out to the mayor’s[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Oct 25

2021

Buffalo’s beleaguered municipal finances

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 The story of Buffalo’s municipal finances under Mayor Byron Brown is divided into two chapters. Chapter One covers the five years before the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority — the city’s control board, formed in 2003 to keep the city from going bankrupt — relinquished its oversight power. In the beginning of Brown’s tenure, which began in 2006, the control board helped the city balance budgets and build up millions in reserves. Chapter Two covers the decade since the control board went “soft” in 2011. It’s a very different tale. Since 2011, Brown has proposed — and year after year[...]

Posted 4 years ago
Investigative Post