Categories for PoliticalPost

Aug 7

2024

GOP no-shows in Cheektowaga

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All three of Cheektowaga’s Republican town board members skipped a special meeting Monday night, denying a quorum to the board’s other three members, all Democrats.  The meeting was meant to be brief: The only agenda item was to set public hearings on a proposal to divide the town into six wards, each with its own representative on the board. Currently board members are elected in town-wide elections, but a formal complaint last year challenged that system, alleging it disenfranchised minority voters in violation of a state law enacted in 2022. More than one-fifth of the town’s 88,000 residents are minorities,[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jul 17

2024

Brown’s raising money as if he’s running for office

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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has a fundraiser today at the Diamond Hawk golf course in Cheektowaga, with tickets starting at $100 and sponsorship packages ranging up to $5,000.  Brown also held a fundraiser earlier this month at a Bisons game and another in April at The Atrium @ Rich’s. His Brown for Buffalo campaign committee has raised $58,500 since January, according to campaign finance disclosures filed on Monday.  That’s $22,000 more than Brown raised in the first six months of 2020, as he prepared to run for a fifth term. The mayor’s committee had $192,545 in the bank as of[...]

Posted 6 months ago

Jul 5

2024

Political gains for foes of Kensington Expressway project

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Nine newcomers won Democratic Party committee seats in Buffalo in the June 25 primary elections.  A few of them beat big names in local politics, including former Common Council President Darius Pridgen, Assemblyman Jon Rivera and former state Sen. Marc Panepinto. All of them beat party insiders. That’s not all they have in common.  Six of the winners in those races are united by their opposition to the state Department of Transportation’s $1 billion plan to tunnelize a stretch of the Kensington Expressway. Matt Dearing, Jeff Carballada, Michael Gainer, Taj Richardson, Chris Hawley and Greg Olma — all winners of[...]

Posted 6 months ago

May 22

2024

Who’s running for Buffalo school board

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Three at-large seats on Buffalo’s school board will be on the ballot this November. Two incumbents, Larry Scott and Terrance Heard, are running for reelection. The other, Ann Rivera, won’t seek another five-year term. So far there are at least four other candidates, three of whom are working together to make the ballot: Ed Speidel, president of the District Parent Coordinating Council and a former co-chair of the district’s Special Education Parents Advisory Committee. He’s the parent of two current Buffalo Public Schools students. He recently held a meat raffle fundraiser at the South Buffalo Moose Lodge. Raziya Hill, founder[...]

Posted 8 months ago

May 3

2024

Buffalo’s precarious budget

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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown struck a pragmatic tone Wednesday as he introduced his budget proposal for the coming year, which is balanced with a 9 percent hike in property taxes and nearly $15 million in reserve funds. The mayor’s $618 million spending proposal, however, suffers from some of the same unrealistic revenue projections that led to shortfalls in the past, before the city’s treasury was bursting with federal pandemic aid to conceal the difference. Consider just three revenue sources the Brown administration has frequently overestimated in past budget cycles: parking meters, parking tickets, and traffic fines. Parking meters are forecast[...]

Posted 9 months ago

Apr 30

2024

Buffalo tax hike coming

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This column was excerpted from Investigative Post’s weekly “PoliticalPost” newsletter. Subscribe here and get “PoliticalPost” in your inbox every Wednesday morning. How much more will Buffalo property owners pay in taxes in the coming year? Much will be revealed when Mayor Byron Brown unveils his budget proposal Wednesday during his State of the City speech at Shea’s 710 Theatre.  But we know a tax hike will be part of the bargain. The mayor and the Common Council for months have been discussing it as an inevitability, given that federal pandemic aid, which has kept the city’s precarious finances above water[...]

Posted 9 months ago

Apr 18

2024

Stefan Mychajliw, beat reporter

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Editor’s Note: Today, we’re sharing Geoff Kelly’s weekly Political Post for everyone to read. If you’d like to receive it every week, sign up at the bottom of this newsletter. Last week I reported that Stefan Mychajliw is part of a slate of Republican committee candidates looking to take control of the party apparatus in Elma, where the former county comptroller moved a year-and-a-half ago. Mychajliw has been making his living as a political operative since leaving office at the end of 2021, including a stint as a flack for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s now-defunct presidential campaign. The former TV news reporter’s new career[...]

Posted 9 months ago

Mar 28

2024

Town boards behaving badly

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Last week we reported that Cheektowaga’s Republican legislators had blocked routine borrowing to fund road and sewer repairs in the town this summer.  This week they did it again. At Tuesday night’s meeting, the board’s three Democrats tried to get three bond resolutions approved — $2.25 million to repave and repair town roads, $5.5 million to improve drainage on those roadways, and $500,000 for sewer repairs.  The board’s three Republicans voted no and the bond resolutions failed. In a statement Wednesday, Town Supervisor Brian Nowak, a Democrat, said the borrowing was meant to pay for “bridge repair, sewer replacement, a[...]

Posted 10 months ago
Investigative Post