Sep 5
2024
Buffalo City Hall vandal explains himself
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Today, we’re sharing a portion of political reporter Geoff Kelly’s weekly newsletter, PoliticalPost. To receive his free report in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up in the subscription box at the end of this article.
The man arrested Sunday for breaking windows at City Hall and making threats against Mayor Byron Brown is the uncle of a woman who was killed when she fell out of a moving car on the Kensington Expressway in February.
On Facebook Antonio Nunes, 40, posted links to stories about his arrest and described his actions as “a warning.” His family, he wrote, was “being disrespected by nobody being held accountable” for his niece’s death.
Char’Dae Nunes fell or climbed out of the back window of the Uber taking her home after work, according to investigators. She was then hit by another car. The drivers of both vehicles cooperated in an investigation of the incident, according to Cheektowaga police, who ruled the death an accident.
The victim’s family believes she was trying to escape danger. An online fundraiser to pay for a private investigation of the incident has raised more than $11,000. A petition asking Cheektowaga police to reopen their inquiry has 428 signatures.
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“That was my niece,” Nunes said in a three-and-a-half-minute video posted two weeks ago to Facebook peppered with profanity and threats. Nunes warned the mayor to “handle that shit … before I handle mine … it can be a threat if you want it to be.” He later threatened to “put [Brown] in a trunk,” among other violent acts.
Nunes pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of criminal mischief, making a terroristic threat, and possession of burglar tools. He is scheduled to appear Sep. 24 before Buffalo City Court Judge Tiffany Perry.
Nunes did not respond to a request for comment made via social media.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown vetoed a measure adopted in July by city lawmakers that would compel the mayor to submit his annual budget proposal by April 8 instead of May 1, the deadline set by the city charter.
Yesterday the Council voted 7 to 2 to override that veto, with Council President Chris Scanlon and North District Councilman Joe Golombek voting against the override.
Council members voted for the change in response to a chaotic budget negotiation in June prompted by the mayor’s proposed 9 percent tax hike, which lawmakers eventually cut in half. In his veto message, Brown noted that the city budget is informed by the state budget, which is due April 1 but is frequently late — by more than a month in 2023, for example. He added that an earlier deadline would impose “an additional and unreasonable workload” on his “very small” budget office, which he said works “7 days a week and long hours during the month leading up to budget completion.”
The mayor last used his veto power in October 2020, after the Council voted to impose limits on the Brown administration’s use of cameras to ticket drivers speeding in school zones. The Council overrode that veto, too, and voted the following year to kill the unpopular program entirely.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomEarmarks — we all know those pork-barrel budget line-items given to special interests are a reality of American politics. They evoke images of handshake deals cut in smoky back rooms. But as my colleague J. Dale Shoemaker discovered, Sen. Chuck Schumer’s earmarks have entered the 21st century: He’s got an online form.
Via a FOIL request, Dale dug up a February email from Chris Zeltmann, Schumer’s director of economic development, to the folks at the Genesee County IDA, helpfully informing them that the annual earmark request form was live online. Don’t email, Zeltmann said, please use the form. He’ll track your earmark request from there.
The emails do not indicate whether or not the IDA submitted a request. Information from Citizens Against Government Waste indicates a Genesee County waterline project got a $1.75 million earmark from Schumer and Rep. Claudia Tenney this year, but no mention of the IDA or its flagship industrial park, STAMP.
Anyone with information about where congressional earmarks landed in Western New York should reach out to Dale at jdshoemaker@investigativepost.
