The feckless management of the Broadway Market has ended, and day-to-day operations will now be managed by the City of Buffalo, at least until November 1.

Managed by Buffalo city government. ‘Nuff Said.

Via Geoff Kelly at Artvoice’s blog (is the V capitalized or not?), comes a story about HUD looking into what’s going on at BERC.

BERC is at least partially funded by HUD, and the local HUD regional director, Steve Banko, decided to send some investigators up from DC to look into how the city is spending HUD money. I’ll let Geoff continue…

The problem predates both the Brown and Masiello administrations, so Banko doesn’t fully trust local HUD monitors to recognize or report problems here when they see them: We’ve been screwing things up in Buffalo for so long, how’s a hometown guy to know right from wrong? (As a contrast, Banko pointed to Rochester, which he says does things aboveboard and makes great use of HUD funds.) And that’s leaving aside political motivations for letting poor accounting slide.

So Banko brought in two HUD employees from DC who he thought might cast an impartial eye on City Hall’s use of federal funds. Banko says the out-of-town guys were floored, especially when they looked at BERC. “They said, ‘Holy shit. What do these people do?’” Banko told me.

Banko said his monitors were told BERC spent $900,000 last year on salaries. That’s BERC’s estimation, not the result of digging through the numbers to find out who else is being paid through its accounts—or whose cell phone bill is paid with BERC funds, or whose car mileage allowance, etc. (This 2006-2007 BERC budget report, which I’m still parsing, suggests it’s typically more than that.)

“They said to me, ‘You were in City Hall, what do these guys do?’ And I said, ‘I was in City Hall, and I haven’t got a clue what they do.’”

He recalled that when the Breckenridge Brew Pub packed up and left town in the middle of the night, defaulting on BERC loans and stealing city-owned equipment, Banko asked then BERC chief Alan DeLisle to give him the contract with Breckenridge so that they might pursue criminal charges against the company. DeLisle refused, arguing that it would be bad for economic development if city government tried to punish an out-of-town company for screwing the city. Eventually, Banko say, he got the contract, only to learn that no charges could be pursued anyway: Under the terms of the contract, BERC had been charged with monitoring Breckenridge’s performance, and they hadn’t bothered to do so.

Evidently, given the choice of message to send between:

a) Buffalo is a great place to do business, but don’t screw us, or else we’ll come and get you; and
b) Buffalo is a great place to do business, so we’ll look the other way while you screw us to high heaven

The city, natch, opted for the hitherto-unknown choice:

c) Buffalo is a great place to do business, and we’ll draft a contract that expressly permits you to screw us with impunity.

Sometimes Buffalo is like the ugly girl at the dance. When a boy pays her some attention, she goes gaga and loses all sense of perspective.

You’ve read in the past about Artvoice’s difficulty in wrestling information out of city hall and the requirement that the most routine request be handled via FOIL request.

Now, the Buffalo News is starting a big of pushback against the city for its attempts to maintain complete control over crime reporting in the city. After all, what happens if the garbage going into CitiStat doesn’t jibe with real life?

The News’ Jim Heaney details the problems, including:

Heaney concludes:

How we use the details contained in the crime reports was never an issue in discussions The News had with police and administration officials. Implied throughout this process it that it’s largely a matter that officials in City Hall and Police HQ don’t like some of the stories we’ve written and they’d like to see less crime news in the paper. And one way of doing that is making it harder for reporters to do their jobs. Limit their access to people, put less information in the paperwork.

This tactic runs counter to the trend nationwide, where a growing number of police departments are making more and more crime information available to the press and public, often via the Web.

Someone on Brown’s staff is a control freak, and either Brown is himself, or he’s going along with it because the conclusion was reached that it’s better to butt heads with the press and get criticized for it than to have genuine crime information published in the city. Why the administration chooses to try to make real problems just go away is anyone’s guess, but it is a disservice to the people of the city and region as a whole.

Ultimately, it makes the promise of CitiStat - transparency, accountability, competence, and merit - a joke.

Buffalo native Brian Reilly, who most recently did economic development for Cleveland, has been appointed to replace Richard Tobe. If he is able to implement the items listed in the News’ article, then this might be a great step forward for Buffalo. Instead of remaining mired in bureaucracy, stasis, and a city hall mindset that is all about “the way it’s always been done” versus optimizing the ways in which development can take place in Buffalo, it appears that Mr. Reilly has set some excellent goals:

The changes promoted by Brown and Reilly include:

• A 30-day time period for providing businesses with clear steps and predictable timetables.

• A single point of contact to help business owners navigate city, county and state regulations.

• Modernization of decades-old zoning codes.

• Buffalo Green, a new effort to provide technical assistance to emerging, ecologically friendly businesses.

• A review of the composition and training for boards and committees that issue approvals for development.

• Removal of legal and policy barriers to convey city-owned properties to nonprofit and faith-based organizations for publicly minded reuses of vacant properties.

Reilly also said that using precredential development companies to reduce time and paperwork associated with project submissions also was under consideration, as was advanced approval of uses for some development sites.

Brown said a citywide preservation plan, with strict code enforcement and aggressive prosecution, would be developed for historic properties.

“The goal is to work with the preservation community and identify what those structures are that are the most significant and which the city should target for preservation,” Brown said. “This is something that has not been in place, [and] it’s something we intend on putting in place.”

Everything on that list is excellent, and I love the fact that prioritization and targeting of buildings for preservation is part of the agenda, as well as modernizing codes and regulations. One-stop shopping for businesses wanting to set up shop in Buffalo will also be a very welcome change.

I wish him and his staff the best of luck in changing the hitherto unchangeable.

The handling of the Livery Building situation by the city and the court system has been nothing short of impressive. I never thought they could pull it together, but they did. Judge Burns did what he always does - he was thoughtful and came up with a solution that everyone could stomach.

The evidently neglectful Freudenheims are not getting off scot-free, the building is going to be saved thanks to an angel developer - Savarino Companies, and a solution was reached with lightning speed, by Buffalo standards.

Judge Burns and the city’s Law Department are to be commended, and Savarino just bought a whole bunch of goodwill along with that building. Score one for Buffalo, for a change.

One hopes that the preservation community (and community-at-large) might prioritize buildings that may not be designated landmarks, are endangered and need saving. Perhaps they could take lessons learned from the Livery fiasco and be more pro-active rather than re-active when it comes to saving buildings deemed important. These things shouldn’t have to happen at the point when emergency injunctive relief is required to prevent demolition. A plan. Priorities. It would do a lot to not only save buildings, but dramatically improve the reputation of the preservationist community. By being pro-active rather than re-active, they lose the “obstructionist” epithet altogether. Just a thought.

You are the Mayor of Buffalo or the County Executive of Erie County.

Name 5 things that you would implement right now that would have a significant positive impact on the city or region.

(Photo credit: Eye8Pudding via Flickr)

No, not the rumors about Mayor Brown supposedly being investigated by the FBI or considered for an Albany post with Governor Paterson.

The unceremonious firing of Commissioner of Economic Development, Permits and Inspection Services, and all-around smart guy Richard Tobe.

Tobe didn’t get along with Byron’s Thing One, Steve Casey. End of discussion.

Sometimes, you read stuff that’s sad and infuriating in equal degrees. This article by Steve Watson details the arrival and imminent departure of Poppy Wright to Buffalo. Ultimately, it’s a tale of hope and despair - of success and failure - of revitalization and blight. Here, the City of Buffalo could have done something basic to help this business grow and thrive. It didn’t. How typical and sad. The perpetuation of fail and mediocrity continue apace, and this do-nothing administration will most likely cruise to re-election despite its ever-more-evident awfulness.

Poppy Wright moved from the West Coast to Buffalo in 2006, thinking she’d found a slice of heaven on the city’s West Side.

She’s leaving this month after suffering through the nightmare of a vacant neighboring building, City Hall bureaucracy, drug dealers, thieves and finally a fire.

“There goes our life, and pretty much all our worldly possessions,” Wright said Thursday, as a demolition crew cleared the site of the tavern she and her husband had purchased on Niagara Street. “I was just thinking, I’m tired of starting over. We just started over two years ago.”

Wright moved here from Sacramento, Calif., after she found pictures of Buffalo on Flickr, a photo-sharing Web site, and fell in love with the city’s architecture and neighborhoods.

There are pictures of the fire here. If you check out the Flickr Buffalo group, you can see an ongoing discussion about the fire here. The photo I used above shows Wright’s bar on the left - the former Danny Zack’s and now-abandoned-future “Fuhgeddaboudit” that they had worked so hard on. To the right is the vacant, blighted eyesore that brought their bar down and crushed their dreams.

The most infuriating part of this whole story is that this was completely preventable, and the City had actual knowledge of this issue.

Early last Sunday, a fire started in the abandoned building next-door. It swiftly spread to Danny Zack’s, forcing the Wrights and their children to flee their second-floor apartment with just the clothes they were wearing.

The building was demolished Tuesday, but not before looters got inside and stole a safe containing thousands of dollars, a washer and dryer and valuable electronic equipment.

The Wrights, living in a hotel room thanks to a Red Cross housing voucher, plan to move to Sean’s native Brooklyn after the school year ends.

They’ll leave behind a frustration with city bureaucracy, fond memories of Buffalo and, soon, a vacant lot at the corner of Niagara and Breckenridge streets.

“They came in to start a business and because it’s not a billion- dollar, pie-in-the-sky project on the waterfront, they got ignored,” said Robert Franke, executive director of the Grant- Ferry Association.

While we all collectively wring our hands over things like buildings on the inner harbor and parking lots and sense of place and NIMBY/BANANAism and other mediocre bullshit, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of Poppy Wrights working their butts off trying to make the city better, trying to make a buck, trying to get by, trying to improve not only their personal circumstances, but the city’s. Yet if they’re not well-connected, they are SOL when it comes to getting basic attention and services.

Action? Transparency? CitiStat? How come there’s been no “weekly” CitiStat report update since (at the latest) January 2008?

The Wrights said they’d complained to the mayor’s tip line for months about drug use and prostitution activity around the building, which they said listed toward Danny Zack’s.

“My initial concern was it was going to fall on us,” Sean Wright said.

City records show 13 complaints filed over conditions at 1219 Niagara between April 2002 and April 2008, according to the mayor’s office and the office of David A. Rivera, who represents the Niagara District on the Common Council.

The city took the previous owner to Housing Court over numerous violations starting in 2004, and took ownership of the property last November due to unpaid back taxes, said Richard M. Tobe, commissioner of economic development, permits and inspection services.

The building was on the city’s demolition list, along with about 2,000 other properties, but no demolition date had been scheduled, Tobe said.

“There’s a vast backlog of demolitions,” Tobe said.

And is there any sort of prioritizing when it comes to demolitions? Do buildings that pose an imminent threat of harm to neighboring buildings get bumped up on the list? The City owned the building. It didn’t offer it up for sale, didn’t bring it up to code, and didn’t get around to demolishing it. Just heartbreaking.

Where on the City’s website do you find the link to “starting a business in Buffalo“? Should the Wrights have spread around some political contributions to get some attention? Should they have supported the Common Council candidacy of Casey-Brown selection Peter Savage III? Would that have gotten them some attention? BERC? Partnership? BNE? I mean, God forbid there be a single entity for business owners to go to for help in dealing with bureaucracy, inaction, funding, permitting, etc.

Last Tuesday, the Wrights went back to Danny Zack’s to try to retrieve some of their belongings before the ordered emergency demolition began.

Thieves, however, had stolen their washer and dryer, oven, TV, laptop computer, DVD player and a safe holding family documents and thousands of dollars for the closing.

The Wrights did manage to recover Poppy’s now-smoke-damaged wedding dress, a tea cup with sentimental value and one cat, Onyx. Another cat and a hamster are missing.

How many more dreams must be crushed?

The ACLU has an ongoing FOIA demand and lawsuit for documents related to the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas.

Below is a page from a CIA Office of the Inspector General review of the CIA’s interrogation and detention program.

So, we know they waterboarded suspects, and the rest, as the ACLU suggests, is left up to one’s imagination.

This sort of governmental transparency and openness is reminiscent of Buffalo’s own City Hall. See here, and here, and here.

At least the City of Buffalo is in good company.

Also - as an aside - the City’s FOIL policy is a story in and of itself. An administration that ran on CitiStat and transparency has implemented GIGO on one, and completely shut down the other.

And furthermore, the audit of the Mayor’s Impact Team underscores the complete ineffectiveness - or possibly gaming of - CitiStat, which is only as good as the information it is fed. Seems as if the system can be rigged to spit out whatever predetermined conclusion the administration wants - it all depends on the data going in. Its failure to discover longstanding malfeasance in that department leads one to wonder what other events of colossal FAIL remain undetected.

Artvoice reports on the City Comptroller’s preliminary audit of the Mayor’s Impact Team, members of which were caught on video working on a supervisor’s home’s landscaping one day:

What we have found in our preliminary review of the Mayor’s Impact Team is a lack of controls across the board that in effect condones an environment where incidents like the one that allegedly occurred on April 25 can take place. Let me cite a few examples.

A spot check on May 13 at the Impact Team’s headquarters in Shoshone Park found time sheets that had been signed twice for the day, even though the workday was not yet complete. Also at Shoshone Park we discovered poor inventory controls with a lack of proper marking and reliance mostly on the memory of one employee.

We also found areas of concern regarding fuel, a costly item in the current economic environment. Four employees have access to the Fuelmaster system but gas cans can be filled for mowers and gas-powered equipment with no odometer readings, using instead the reading from the truck carrying the equipment. If a gas container can be filled, so can an unregistered vehicle, or at least topped off. Tighter controls are obviously needed.

As to the day in question, April 25, according to MIT officials, members of the Impact Team were absent without leave that afternoon when the work on the private residence took place. The sign-out sheets for that day indicate that two employees including the crew chief, who approved the time sheet, signed out at noon. Another worked signed in and out and later crossed his name out altogether.

After the fact, a slip requesting a day off for that employee appeared in Public Works offices, signed by the crew chief. There are no records to account for the use of city vehicles or equipment.

Read the whole post here.

In follow-up to the previous post, wherein I describe the time-wastefulness of the City Council in condemning a private citizen, I present to you this tidbit from Artvoice’s Geoff Kelly.

You see, Mr. Kelly wanted to attend a public hearing yesterday afternoon at City Hall in the City of Buffalo, New York, United States of America. One supposes, given such a moniker, and given such an address, that accommodations would be made for the public to actually attend that hearing.

But hold on - this is the Buffalo of Steve Casey, Byron Brown, and other Pigeonistas - people for whom politics is about power and silence. People who pander to voters during election cycles and then shut them out once power is attained.

What happened? The public hearing for the 2008-2009 proposed budget for the City of Buffalo, which taxpayers were ostensibly invited to attend, and where they were supposedly permitted to speak, took place yesterday at City Hall at 5:30 pm. How progressive that the hearing was held after 5:00 pm, so that people could attend after work.

Problem is - City Hall was locked.

I arrived at 5:40 and found every door to City Hall locked. Seriously. This sucks, I thought. Then: But at least its’s fodder for a column.

So I hung around, pering in the door, ringing the bell that surely does not work, waiting for someone to leave. At about 5:45pm I was joined by a news crew from Channel 4. We tried calling people we knew inside, but everyone was gone for the day — or in Council Chambers, attending the “public” hearing that the public was unable to attend, because all the doors were locked.

At about 5:50pm, Inspections, Permits and Economic Development Commissioner Rich Tobe exited the building but let the door close behind him before I could shout out to hold it open. “Sorry, I can’t get back in now,” he said. I told him I was trying to attend a public hearing up in Council Chambers. He agreed that locking the doors on the evening of such a hearing was curious. But not, he thought, unusual.

Nor did Deputy Mayor Steve Casey seem to consider it strange that the doors were locked, as the Channel 4 team and I raced to the elevators at 6pm, when we finally slipped in the door behind an exiting bureaucrat. “Hurry up,” he said, “it’s just about over.”

Right he was: In the absence of any “public” in the public hearing, the Council had rolled two hearings into one and wrapped the whole thing up by 6:10pm. Exactly one person had signed up to speak. Everyone in Council Chambers was on the public payroll.

Afterward, Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto summed up the hearing for me: a whole lot of nothing. He too was unsurprised to learn the doors had been locked. They had been locked during the previous day’s public hearing as well, he said.

Democracy is dying in Buffalo. It’s up to the people to fight to get it back.

Hi, Pundits and Pundettes.

A question for you this fine Friday.

Which is dumber?

Carl Paladino saying future expat James Williams only got his job because of he’s black?

or…

Brian Davis helping organize a 5-4 condemnation of that statement in the Buffalo Common Council, punctuating it by saying that Carl Paladino “really needs to be run out of Buffalo?” Evidently, the irony of that comment is lost on Councilman Davis.

Carl Paladino isn’t elected to anything. Don’t we elect legislators to focus on important policy matters, and to uphold the law? So why would they so eagerly rush towards passing something so patently violative of the law.

Or should legislatures take precious time up to debate whenever a private citizen says something stupid? Because in that case, they should be in session 24/7.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to a .pdf of Paladino’s reply to the Council. Looks like they just bought themselves a lawsuit. What a colossal waste of time and resources.

I read about the Mayor’s budget here, and took this away from it:

Taxes are down, crime is down, police and fire are up, youth jobs are up, as well as neighborhood revitalization and readiness for economic growth and development.

Then I read about the Mayor’s budget here. This is what I learned there:

Mayor Byron W. Brown has stepped up his push to create a new $80,000-a-year ethics watchdog in City Hall.

Buried in the mayor’s new 589-page spending plan is a proposal to create a new office of inspector general. Common Council members grilled Brown’s budget team about the plan as lawmakers kicked off their first full day of budget hearings this morning.

If some of the questions that lawmakers asked are an indicator, Brown’s plan to hire his own investigator to sniff out possible corruption and abuse could face rough sailing.

Buffalo already has a comptroller who audits departments, South Council Member Michael P. Kearns argued. He thinks the money could be better spent hiring a “housing czar” to focus on decaying structures and plotting housing strategies.

So, the creation of government jobs continues apace. I think honestly that the very last thing anyone needs is an unindependent “inspector general” who reports directly to the Byron Brown / Steve Casey team that hires him or her.

Carl Paladino - a private, albeit well-connected and well-known, citizen - said some mean things about Buffalo School Superintendent James Williams. In fact, they were downright stupid.

If you say something stupid, does your local legislature come down on you for it?

Common Council members, in a 5-4 vote Tuesday, condemned as “racially divisive” recent remarks by developer Carl P. Paladino, who said Buffalo’s school superintendent was hired because he’s black.

Some Council members also said Paladino owes Superintendent James A. Williams an apology.

“I think this individual really needs to be run out of Buffalo,” said Ellicott Council Member Brian C. Davis, who said Paladino’s frequent “rampages” and “inflammatory” remarks negate much of the good of his development projects.

Do I agree with or condone Paladino’s remarks? Not in the least. Would I condemn them? Sure.

Would I say that he needs to be “run out of Buffalo”? WTF is this, the wild West?

The Buffalo Common Council blew a gasket. How heartening it is to learn that every other problem in Buffalo has been solved that the city’s legislature can direct its attention towards a private citizen’s mean words.

Williams’ office did not return calls seeking comment, but five of Buffalo’s nine lawmakers have rebuked Paladino for comments he made Thursday at a Niagara Frontier Industry Education Council breakfast. Business leaders, educators and students attended the Cheektowaga forum.

Davis said it was unconscionable that Paladino made the comments in front of children — youngsters who should be taught that hard work, not handouts, get people ahead in life. “The message that was sent there to these kids was absolutely horrendous,” Davis said.

Paladino said he has since apologized to the children — but only because they probably didn’t understand the point he was trying to make. He said he will not apologize to Williams, contending that he and the School Board are mismanaging the district.

“I don’t like incompetent people,” Paladino said, alleging that hundreds of millions of dollars are being squandered on what he views as a substandard education for city children.

At the very least, Davis said, Paladino should resign from Buffalo Place and Buffalo Civic Auto Ramps, or be ousted from the not-for-profit entities’ boards.

Or perhaps a six-shooter at high noon. On what basis should Paladino resign from anything? He said something mean and insensitive? OK, that’s fine. Council members can bluster all they want for the press. One thing they oughtn’t do, however, is try and pass laws that are patently unconstitutional.

But Davis and Masten Council Member Demone A. Smith also want the state to consider passing a law that would ban people who engage in “racially offensive” conduct from obtaining public leases or contracts. The state rents office space in some of Paladino’s buildings. Most Council members were uncomfortable with this clause. They sent it to committee for further debate.

Does Paladino’s statement rise to the level of “racially offensive conduct”? Does speech = conduct in this instance? Who is the arbiter of what is and is not racially “offensive”? Since when does the Common Council tell the state what laws to pass? Doesn’t Buffalo have enough real, genuine problems

North Council Member Joseph Golombek Jr. questioned the constitutionality of such a rule, a concern that was echoed by Council President David A. Franczyk. Speech can be “stupid, offensive or wrong” and still be protected by the First Amendment, Franczyk said.

Government would be “treading on dangerous waters” if it tried to punish people who said offensive things, said Delaware Council Member Michael J. LoCurto.

Council members voting in favor of the bill condemning Paladino’s remarks were Davis; bill co-sponsor Smith; Lo- Curto; Richard A. Fontana, Lovejoy District; and Bonnie E. Russell, University. Voting against it were Golombek; Franczyk, Fillmore; Michael P. Kearns, South; and David A. Rivera, Niagara.

Some who opposed the bill said they found Paladino’s comments unacceptable. But they want to review transcripts of what he said — if such transcripts exist — and want the entire bill to be discussed in committee.

Wow. What a novel concept. Let’s find out what the guy actually said before we start talking about violating the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

Here’s a novel thought - everyone’s an embarassment.

Kudos to Steve Barber and embattled Channel 7, which caught members of the Mayor’s Impact Team doing yardwork at another member’s North Buffalo home using city equipment and vehicles. The City Comptroller is now conducting an audit, and Artvoice’s Geoff Kelly has his FOIL requests out. But note from this post that his request is to follow-up on a separate, unrelated rumor he heard and has nothing to do with this particular incident.

The Boston Herald used to do these types of “gotcha” stories all the time, and frankly I thought they were great. They not only led to big sales, but kept people working on the people’s dime on their toes.

I suspect that this is only the very tippy-top of a massive iceberg.

Photo courtesy of Calanan via Flickr