Articles for Geoff Kelly

Dec 3

2024

Buffalo’s ‘power structure is the problem’

Government policies pushed by the region’s traditional power brokers — real estate developers, bankers, law firms and other business interests — have been “a disaster for the people of Buffalo,” a new report concludes. Tax abatements and subsidies are contributing to “a deepening commercial real estate crisis” downtown, according to the report, released last month by Our City Action Buffalo, a progressive community advocacy group that is a frequent critic of the city’s elected officials. Opposition to affordable housing projects has exacerbated the city’s poverty problems, according to the report. What’s more, Buffalo is staring at a fiscal crisis engendered[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 27

2024

Overtime for Buffalo’s city employees through the roof

Despite the city’s worsening finances, Buffalo’s public employees — mostly cops and firefighters — are racking up overtime pay like never before. Last fiscal year, no fewer than 26 employees earned more than $100,000 in overtime. Another 270 pocketed over $50,000 in overtime, while 400 more took home at least $20,000. The result: a $22 million hole in the city budget that wrapped up in June. Those figures come from a report issued last week by Buffalo Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams, whose staff reviewed five years of payroll records to document the burgeoning cost of overtime and its impact on the[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 14

2024

How Erie County voted for president

The Democratic presidential ticket’s margin of victory in Erie County was provided by voters in the City of Buffalo. Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz won the county by 42,243 votes, according to the current count. She won Buffalo by 46,765, snagging more than three-quarters of the ballots cast by city voters. The Democrats also won by lesser but still substantial margins in the towns of Amherst, Tonawanda and Aurora, and squeaked out victories in Cheektowaga and Lackawanna. The rest of the county registered various shades of red, ranging from pinkish communities like Orchard Park, Hamburg and[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 13

2024

Cheektowaga’s faded blue electorate

As goes Cheektowaga, so goes the nation, former Buffalo News political reporter Bob McCarthy likes to say. The McCarthy maxim held true in 2016, when Cheektowaga voters broke by the thinnest of margins for Republican Donald Trump, and in 2020, when they favored Democrat Joe Biden. This year the results were mixed: The Democratic presidential candidate won the town but lost the race nationwide. However, Republicans made rare and important gains in local races. Unofficial results show Democrat Kamala Harris carrying Cheektowaga by about 4 percentage points, or just shy of 1,700 votes. Her margin of victory in the town[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 7

2024

Harris’ underwhelming victory in New York State

Kamala Harris won New York State on Tuesday. Or, more accurately, she won New York City, whose voters provided her margin of victory. She also won in counties with urban centers — Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany — while losing Long Island and most of rural upstate. Harris this year drew 900,000 fewer votes in New York State than Joe Biden did in 2020. Biden beat Trump that year by 23 percentage points, as did Hillary Clinton in 2016. Harris’s margin of victory was just shy of 12 percent. Trump, meanwhile, has gained support with each appearance on the ballot[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Nov 6

2024

Election results: A rare incumbent loss, lots of no-contests

There are still some votes to count and results have not been certified, but most of Tuesday’s local races are pretty well resolved. A few notable results, based on election night numbers: In the region’s most expensive contest, for Erie County district attorney, Democrat Mike Keane beat deep-pocketed Republican James Gardner by nearly 20 percentage points. Keane has been acting DA since John Flynn stepped down at the end of March to join the Lippes Matthias law firm, making him a quasi-incumbent. The two candidates spent more than $1 million between them, according to the latest tally by the state[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Oct 28

2024

Ethics board says former Evans supervisor owes $23K

Mary Hosler, Erie County’s chief auditor, should be fined $23,000 for payments she took but was not entitled to while serving as Evans town supervisor, the town’s Ethics Committee concluded last week. The five-member panel agreed with a recent audit by the state comptroller’s office that found Hosler improperly took compensation for opting out of the town’s health insurance coverage. (Investigative Post wrote about the audit last month.) Elected officials were not entitled to such opt-out payments at the time Hosler sought the money, the ethics board concluded. On top of that, Hosler was covered by the town’s health insurance[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Oct 22

2024

Poloncarz blasts Brown for hiring Steve Casey at OTB

The elected official with the greatest sway over Western Regional Off-Track Betting is “incredibly disappointed” that former Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has brought a controversial former deputy with him to his new post as head of the troubled public gambling corporation. “Former Mayor Brown committed to the Board of Directors that he would move Western Region OTB towards transparency and accountability,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said in a statement to Investigative Post. Hiring Steven M. Casey — “an incredibly toxic force in Buffalo City Hall for decades,” according to Poloncarz — “moves Western Region OTB in the complete opposite[...]

Posted 3 months ago