Articles for Geoff Kelly

Aug 22

2019

Cop car shortage sidelines new officers

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council have shortchanged the Buffalo Police Department’s police fleet in recent years. They’ve replaced cars at less than half the rate the police department has lobbied for, and which is considered best practice by experts in fleet maintenance. Last week, Investigative Post reported on the sorry state of affairs. The police department has too few patrol cars, we found, and many of the cars that are in service are in poor repair. The situation, said John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, is “dire.” “There aren’t enough cars for the patrol[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Aug 15

2019

Buffalo police handcuffed by ramshackle fleet

On any given shift, Buffalo police have just half the patrol cars they need to do the job. “I would describe [the situation] as dire,” John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, told Investigative Post. “There aren’t enough cars for the patrol officers to patrol the streets and get to the calls.” The cause: The Brown administration has not replaced police vehicles as frequently as the police department would like and national standards advise. As a result, the police fleet is aging and in disrepair. The cars that do work are driven into the ground, while those in[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Aug 11

2019

A problematic downtown development project

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. —T. S. Eliot When one Western New York developer sues another, the motive — no matter the arguments presented in court, however they may be presented in the media as a pursuit of the public good — is of course money. It has to be: To have standing to sue, a petitioner must demonstrate a financial or quality-of-life interest to the court. So, when Rocco Termini sued Ciminelli Development in mid-June to stop Ciminelli’s latest plan for 201 Ellicott Street, naturally Termini had a financial motive:[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Aug 6

2019

Comptrollers behaving badly, Part 2

On June 21, Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw issued an invitation to Department of Motor Vehicles employees across the state: If you disagree with the new “Green Light” law, under which New York State will soon issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, and you suspect such a person is applying for a license, call or email the Erie County Comptroller’s Whistleblower Hotline. Mychajliw promised he would forward anonymous tips gathered therein to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Two weeks earlier, at the request of Erie County Clerk Mickey Kearns, Mychajliw issued a report “regarding the consequences of granting licenses[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Aug 5

2019

Comptrollers behaving badly, Part 1

On the website of the Buffalo city comptroller, the top tab on the left — the place of pride — is occupied by the word “Transparency.” I guess that’s meant to be ironic. Click on that tab, and follow the prompts to the page titled “Financial Reports,” and you’ll soon discover what I mean. In the last week or so, Barbara Miller-Williams, the interim comptroller who is running unopposed for a full term in November, wiped that page clean of critical reports created and published by the staff of her predecessor, Mark Schroeder. Buy tickets now to iPost benefit featuring[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jul 24

2019

Dixon’s push poll, continued

A couple Sundays ago, Buffalo News politics columnist Bob McCarthy wrote, in essence, that I got it all wrong in my June 19 piece about Lynne Dixon’s push poll. I don’t know that I did. I don’t think McCarthy knows that I did, either. Dixon is challenging incumbent Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. In early June, her campaign commissioned a poll of 1,325 likely voters. I first read about the poll in McCarthy’s June 16 story, which touted the Dixon campaign’s conclusion that the race was a statistical tie — a good sign for the underdog. Naturally, I wanted to[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jul 23

2019

Kelly talks Buffalo budget woes on ‘Pressroom

Geoff Kelly has been reporting of late about Buffalo’s growing fiscal problems. He spoke on WBFO’s Press Pass about the poor budget practices of Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council and the inaction of the city’s fiscal control board. Give a listen.  

Posted 6 years ago

Jul 9

2019

Buffalo’s in shaky fiscal shape

To hear Mayor Byron Brown tell the story, the City of Buffalo’s finances are strong and stable, and his finance team has constructed another in a series of sound, responsible budgets.  Two important bellwethers put the lie to that narrative. The first is the depletion of the city’s reserves. In the past decade, the Brown and the Common Council have used $107 million in reserves to close budget shortfalls. As a result, the city has no reserves left to plug future deficits. The lack of reserves has contributed to a second problem — poor cash flow — that resulted in[...]

Posted 6 years ago
Investigative Post