Tag: Politics

Apr 18

2024

Stefan Mychajliw, beat reporter

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Editor’s Note: Today, we’re sharing Geoff Kelly’s weekly Political Post for everyone to read. If you’d like to receive it every week, sign up at the bottom of this newsletter. Last week I reported that Stefan Mychajliw is part of a slate of Republican committee candidates looking to take control of the party apparatus in Elma, where the former county comptroller moved a year-and-a-half ago. Mychajliw has been making his living as a political operative since leaving office at the end of 2021, including a stint as a flack for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s now-defunct presidential campaign. The former TV news reporter’s new career[...]

Posted 5 days ago

Apr 12

2024

Challengers target party committee seats

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Stefan Mychajliw is running for a GOP committee seat in Elma. June’s primary elections look to be pretty subdued in Erie County, at least at the top of the ballot, where candidates vie for the more familiar offices — primarily state legislature seats this year.  Instead the action this year is down ballot, deep in the trenches, where battles are brewing among Democrats and Republicans seeking party committee seats.  Committee members — two representing each election district for two-year terms — choose their party’s leadership, from the chair to the treasurer. They also have a say in their party’s endorsement[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Mar 28

2024

Town boards behaving badly

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Last week we reported that Cheektowaga’s Republican legislators had blocked routine borrowing to fund road and sewer repairs in the town this summer.  This week they did it again. At Tuesday night’s meeting, the board’s three Democrats tried to get three bond resolutions approved — $2.25 million to repave and repair town roads, $5.5 million to improve drainage on those roadways, and $500,000 for sewer repairs.  The board’s three Republicans voted no and the bond resolutions failed. In a statement Wednesday, Town Supervisor Brian Nowak, a Democrat, said the borrowing was meant to pay for “bridge repair, sewer replacement, a[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Mar 22

2024

Bad politics, bad roads in Cheektowaga

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This column was adopted from Investigative Post’s weekly “PoliticalPost” newsletter. Subscribe here and get “Political Post” in your inbox every Wednesday morning. Partisan dysfunction continues on the Cheektowaga Town Board. Last week the board’s Republicans blocked two resolutions authorizing the town to borrow money to pay for annual road and sewer work. The first bond resolution was for up to $2.25 million to repave and repair town roads; the second was for up to $5.5 million to improve drainage on those roadways. Such resolutions used to be routine. They still are in most towns and cities. But Cheektowaga is special this[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Mar 8

2024

Tricky finances, politics in Cheektowaga

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This column was adopted from Investigative Post’s weekly “Political Post” newsletter. Subscribe here and get “Political Post” in your inbox every Wednesday morning. We’ve reported a lot in recent years about the City of Buffalo’s troubled finances.  And most folks reading this have heard about the 11.4 percent tax hike in Amherst, as well as the  attendant uprising, now entering its fourth month.  Cheektowaga has a looming budget problem, too, according to the town supervisor, Brian Nowak, who took office in January after six years as a member of the town board. On Twitter/X this week, Nowak noted that the town’s expenses[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 28

2024

Disgraced former judge returns to the bench

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A former Lackawanna judge who resigned in disgrace 11 years ago is getting a second chance at the job, which pays close to $100,000 a year. Lackawanna Mayor Annette Iafallo will appoint Louis Violanti an associate city court judge effective March 1, a spokesman for the city confirmed.  Violanti, 50, held that same post from 2007 until 2013, when he stepped down in the wake of a ticket-fixing scandal.  In December 2012, Violanti promised a friend he’d “take care of” a citation the friend had been given for an expired registration, according to an investigation into the incident by the[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Jan 25

2024

All Tim Kennedy’s money

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State Sen. Tim Kennedy State Sen. Tim Kennedy’s campaign committee spent nearly $1.5 million in 2023, a year in which the Buffalo Democrat wasn’t up for re-election. He spent more last year than he did on his two previous re-election campaigns combined.  He spent nearly four times as much as he did in 2021, the last off-year for state legislators. And he spent two-thirds of that money — more than $1 million — after word began circulating in July that Kennedy’s political mentor, U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, would step down mid-term, opening up a seat that Kennedy would like to[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jan 17

2024

PoliticalPost: City auditor quits

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This is PoliticalPost, a weekly newsletter we launched last week. Subscribe here to get Political Post delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning — because it won’t usually be available online. Buffalo’s chief auditor, Kevin Kaufman, has quit his job in the city comptroller’s office. Multiple sources say Kaufman, 48, left for a private-sector job, at least in part due to his frustration with working conditions under Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams. He’d been working for the city a little more than 11 years. Miller-Williams declined to elaborate on his reasons for leaving, referring those questions to Kaufman. She told Investigative Post[...]

Posted 3 months ago
Investigative Post

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