Unpacking Byron Brown’s move to OTB

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Reporting, analysis and commentary
by Jim Heaney, editor of Investigative Post

Byron Brown is as good as gone from City Hall. 

It’s good for the city, given his nearly 19-year reign of error. Mayor-in waiting Chris Scanlon is an unproven commodity, but he’s got to be an improvement. But Brown getting a raise to take command of the troubled OTB certainly doesn’t represent good government.

Here’s my take:

• Brown is making the move, as reported by J. Dale Shoemaker, for a couple of reasons, starting with money. The mayor is getting a huge bump in salary, from $178,518 to $295,000 next year and the possibility of still more in 2026 and 2027. But more importantly, he’s going to boost his pension payments once he retires (He’s now 66.) His pension is based on his number of years in the state system (40 and counting) and his peak earnings. A second reason for leaving City Hall: The you-know-what is about to hit the fan and Brown doesn’t want to be around to deal with it. He’s mismanaged city finances for more than a decade and the bill will come due with the budget that takes effect next July. The city is facing a budget deficit of some $50 million and closing the gap is going to be painful. Brown, during his nearly 19 years in office, has never been one to deal with difficult issues, and the deficit is the mother of all difficult issues.
• The problems of leadership don’t stop with Brown or outgoing President and CEO Henry Wojtaszek. There’s board Chairman Dennis Bassett. He was part of the crew that granted big pay raises and first-time employment contracts to senior staff when the state Legislature passed reforms. Then there was Bassett’s demand a couple of months ago, later rescinded, that people attending OTB board meetings join him in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Or his decision last week to withhold release of Brown’s employment contract, even though legal experts told us the contract is a matter of public record.
• Some of the reasons uttered by Bassett and other board members for hiring Brown are laughable. There’s the claim the mayor will run OTB like a corporation rather than a political organization. The guy has been working in government for 40 years. He is as political an animal as they come. Also, that Brown will improve transparency and relations with the media. The Brown administration has frosty relations with much of the news media in Buffalo and his administration routinely drags its feet in responding to Freedom of Information requests. 
• Consider the math: Brown will go from managing a $602 million budget and 2,770 employees with the city to a budget of $53 million and 469 employees, many of them part-time, with OTB. And for that he gets a $116,482 raise. By doing so, the board will make Brown the highest paid OTB boss in the state. Hell, he’ll be making more than the governor or the mayor of New York City.
• The timing of Brown’s selection is political. By waiting until after Aug. 5 to take a new job, Brown ensured there would be no special election this November to replace him. In a special election, party leaders would have designated candidates — no petitioning to get on the ballot, no primaries. Democratic Party leaders were unlikely to choose Common Council President Chris Scanlon as their candidate in that scenario. By avoiding a special election, Brown ensured that Scanlon — whose support in South Buffalo was instrumental to the mayor’s reelection in 2021 — will serve as acting mayor for nine months before facing voters in next June’s Democratic primary. Thus, Scanlon next year will run for a full term as a quasi-incumbent.
• It’s telling that no public official, aside from Assembly Member Monica Wallace, has criticized the Brown hiring. The stony silence underscores the degree to which Democrats and Republicans alike are content to help themselves to the spoils of “public” service. 
• A show of hands: How many of you think Brown is going to make the 45-minute drive daily from Buffalo to OTB’s headquarters in Batavia? Will OTB provide him a car to make the drive when it so moves him? And a driver, like he has as mayor? It should all be spelled out in the 18-page employment contract that Bassett refuses to release.

In short, the whole episode represents WNY politics at its absolute worst.

Jim Heaney