Articles for Geoff Kelly

Jul 20

2022

Hardwick demands answers from OTB

For the first time, one of the governments that owns the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. is demanding answers about the agency’s management practices and business dealings. Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick sent two letters this week to Henry Wojtaszek, OTB’s president and CEO. One letter posed a series of questions about the agency’s practice of providing top-shelf health insurance to board members, despite repeated warnings that doing so is impermissible. It’s a subject Investigative Post has covered extensively, in more than two dozen stories published over four years. Hardwick’s other letter raised questions about OTB’s sale of land to[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 19

2022

Council adopts new district lines

On Tuesday, Buffalo’s Common Council voted unanimously to adopt a redistricting plan that community groups and activists have spent the past two months trying to stop. The new district maps comprise an amended version of a redistricting plan unveiled in May by a citizens commission whose members were appointed by the Council and Mayor Byron Brown. The plan — which largely leaves intact the gerrymandering of a decade ago — will now be sent to Brown. The mayor must hold a public hearing on the matter. He then can approve or veto the plan, or allow it to pass into[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 11

2022

City Hall puts off day of financial reckoning

The COVID pandemic has been very good for the City of Buffalo’s finances. Pandemic relief funds from the federal American Rescue Plan have been a tremendous boon. You can see that money at work right now in city streets and parks. It’s going to help pay for water and sewer projects, as well as micro-loans to small businesses and the expansion of broadband internet access. It helped keep poor city residents in their homes. Most important for city government has been revenue replacement money — cash the federal government sent to make up for revenue the city claims it lost[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 5

2022

Council lost, activists take redistricting rudder

Last week Our City Action Buffalo — an organization of good government activists — scored two quick victories in a battle with the Common Council over redistricting. First, Our City Action successfully packed a June 28 public hearing with speakers, more than 100 of them. All opposed the Council’s redistricting plan, first unveiled in May by a commission that did its work largely behind closed doors. The Council’s favored plan largely leaves intact district lines that were gerrymandered 11 years ago to benefit incumbents. The speakers were unanimous in their support for an alternative redistricting plan created by Our City[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 29

2022

City Hall transgressions cost taxpayers

On Wednesday, the Buffalo Common Council approved $510,000 in payments to settle nine personal injury claims filed against the city. A third of those lawsuits were against Buffalo police, whose missteps frequently cost the taxpayers big: almost $12 million in one five-year period, according to an Investigative Post analysis. But cops aren’t the only city employees who mess up on the job. The biggest payout approved yesterday by the Council’s Claims Committee was $225,000 to Freddie Ingram. In November 2018, a Buffalo parking inspector, Jumanne Pitts, backed his city-owned vehicle the wrong way down a street and collided with Ingram’s[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 28

2022

Council catches hell on redistricting plan

The first public hearing on a redistricting plan for Buffalo’s Common Council attracted just two members of the public. Only one spoke. Tuesday night’s public hearing was another story. More than 100 people attended the 5 p.m. session — 60 or more in person, another 40 or so online, according to Delaware District Council Member Joel Feroleto, who chaired the hearing. At least half the attendees spoke. All used the three minutes allotted to them to disparage the plan drafted by the Council’s appointed Citizens Commission on Reapportionment, first unveiled at a May 18 public hearing. That May 18 hearing[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 21

2022

Buffalo’s gerrymandered Council districts

A coalition of activists and good government groups is urging Buffalo’s Common Council to reject a redistricting plan that has been moving quickly and quietly toward approval. And they’ve got a plan of their own to put in its place — one they say does a better job keeping neighborhoods together and promoting racial equity, while undoing the gerrymandering of a decade ago. The proposal moving through the Council was submitted last month by a citizens commission charged with recommending new district lines based on 2020 Census numbers. That commission worked largely behind closed doors, with little public notice or[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 14

2022

No action on stadium benefits agreement

In January, good-government activists and elected officials said there should be no public subsidies for a new Buffalo Bills stadium without a community benefits agreement. A memorandum of understanding outlining the deal, involving $1.13 billion in subsidies, was announced in March, with no CBA in place. The Erie County Legislature approved the MOU in May, two weeks after it approved a down payment of $100 million towards the county’s $250 million share of construction costs. Still no CBA, though the agreement calls for one to be negotiated. It’s now the middle of June, and there is still no CBA. No[...]

Posted 3 years ago