On Monday afternoon, Cavette Chambers of the City of Buffalo’s law department sent me some of the records I’d asked for several weeks ago, regarding the Mayor’s Impact Team. I originally requested all records related to the team’s budgets and expenditures dating back two years.

Here’s the letter of decision from Chambers, and here’s the gist: I was not given access to the team’s 2006-2007 budget, she said, because those records do not exist. I was not given access to audits performed on the team, because no audits had been performed up until the one launched by City Comptroller Andy SanFilippo two weeks ago. Finally, I’ve been denied all correspondence (paper, email, etc.) related to the budgets and expenditures because, she says, they are “intra/inter-agency materials.”

That last denial cites New York State Public Officers Law 87(2)(g):

2. Each agency shall, in accordance with its published rules, make available for public inspection and copying all records, except that such agency may deny access to records or portions thereof that:

…

(g) are inter-agency or intra-agency materials which are not:

i. statistical or factual tabulations or data;
ii. instructions to staff that affect the public;
iii. final agency policy or determinations; or
iv. external audits, including but not limited to audits performed by the comptroller and the federal government; or

I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t believe that the correspondence Chambers has denied access to isn’t covered by one or more of those four exceptions. Especially by (iv), given that an audit of the Mayor’s Impact team is near completion. Any lawyers out there want to enlighten me?

This is the document I was sent: Mayor’s Impact Team records. We’re sorting through it now. Meanwhile, I’m told the comptroller’s audit will be released next week. I also am told it will be thorough; time will tell.

It’s Day 4 since I filed a FOIL request for all records related to budget and expenditures for the Mayor’s Impact Team. The request, filed the afternoon before Channel 7 caught team leader Bill Buyers and two of his team members working on Buyers’ property on city time with city equipment, has been acknowledged but not yet fulfilled.

But at yesterday’s Common Council meeting, the City Comptroller’s office announced that it would audit the Mayor’s Impact Team. My favorite part of the Buffalo News report on the audit:

Peter K. Cutler, Mayor Byron W. Brown’s communications chief, said the administration is aware of a controversy when Buyers worked under a previous administration. He said that there were reports that some city workers might have performed personal tasks for Buyers but that there is no documentation that disciplinary action was taken.

“There is nothing in his personnel file . . . about any suspension or termination,” Cutler said.

I love that Cutler never seems to have any clear memory of the Masiello administration. He talks about it like it’s some foreign country he’s not really convinced exists, rather than an administration in which he served.

In response to all this, a defender of Buyers has posted identical comments both here and at BuffaloPundit. So I’ll share the rumor that drove me to ask a week and a half ago if the City Comptroller had ever audited the Mayor’s Impact Team, and subsequently to FOIL for the team’s financial records: I heard that the Mayor’s Impact Team has used public money to purchase goods for private use.

I don’t know if Buyers is a good guy or not, or how much good work he’s done. I know he’s been in government a long time. If he’s cheating the taxpayer, being a good guy is no defense. And if an audit shows that the Mayor’s Impact Team does this sort of thing regularly and suggests that higher-ups in the administration have turned a blind eye to the practice, then those higher-ups have no defense either.

Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto, South District Councilmember Mickey Kearns, and Lovejoy District Councilmember Rich Fontana have filed a resolution asking City Comptroller Andy SanFilippo to audit the Mayor’s Impact Team.

Last Monday I spoke with Tony Farina in the Comptroller’s office, who told me that he knew of no past audit of the Mayor’s Impact Team, and added that none was likely to be done without an external request.

Here’s that external request:

RESOLUTION

BY: MR. LoCURTO
COSPONSORS: MR. FONTANA, MR. KEARNS

RE: Requesting an Audit of Mayor’s Impact Team

WHEREAS: three city workers with the Mayor’s Impact Team were recently suspended without pay pending an investigation for allegedly performing landscaping work during regular working hours Friday at the private property of one of the individuals; and

WHEREAS: these actions represent the misuse of City workers and City vehicles; and

WHEREAS: unfortunately, this is not the first time misuse of City vehicles by the Mayor’s Impact Team has been documented; and

WHEREAS: because of the involvement of many different departments, allocations to the Mayor’s Impact Team are not itemized in the City’s Annual Budget; and

WHEREAS: the actions of a select few should not damage the reputation and work ethic of the Mayor’s Impact Team and the good that it has been able to accomplish; and

WHEREAS: the misuse of taxpayer money breeds mistrust of and cynicism in government.

NOW, THEREFOR BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

The Common Council requests that the City Comptroller performs an immediate audit of the Mayor’s Impact Team’s operations and financial expenditures including equipment and cell phone use; and that given the gravity of the allegations, that this report be returned to this honorable body as soon as possible.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT:

This matter be referred to the appropriate committee of the Common Council for further consideration.

___________________ ___________________ _____________________
Michael J. LoCurto Michael P. Kearns Richard A. Fontana

This is the quickest response to a FOIL request Artvoice has ever received from the City of Buffalo. Less than two business days after I requested by email that the city give me all records related to the budget and expenditures of the Mayor’s Impact Team since January 1, 2006, Assistant Corporation Counsel Cavette Chambers has acknowledged receipt of my request:

Mr. Kelly:

Pursuant to Public Officers Law section 89(3), this correspondence will serve as an acknowledgment of your Freedom of Information Law request.

Please be advised that your request has been forwarded to the department of Administration and Finance, Public Works Parks & Streets, and the director of the Quality of Life Programs for a response. Each respective department will conduct a diligent search of its records to determine whether it is in possession of the requested records. Wherein sufficient time is needed to locate, compile, and review the requested records, please allow ten (10) business days from the date of this correspondence for a determination regarding your request.

Should you have any questions regarding the status of your request, you may contact the following individuals:
Donna Estrich with the Dept of Administration and Finance, Charles Masi with the Department of Public Works Parks & Streets, and/or Thomas Smith with Quality of Life Programs.

Sincerely,

Cavette A. Chambers
Assistant Corporation Counsel
City of Buffalo Department of Law
65 Niagara Square
1113 City Hall
Buffalo, New York 14202
Office: 716.851.4316
Fax: 716.851.4105
Email: cchambers@city-buffalo.com

So the wheels are turning, and the city now has to determine whether such records exist (which, if they don’t, would be a inexcusable), and, assuming they do, to compile them and send them to me (which, if that isn’t half an hour’s work, suggests some pretty poor bookkeeping methods).

The day after I FOILed these documents, of course, Bill Buyers, the head of the Mayor’s Impact Team was caught by TV crews with two city laborers working on his own house on city time. Mayor Byron Brown suspended Buyers for 15 days without pay and removed him as the team’s supervisor, and suspended his subordinates for five days without pay…and now people are beginning to roll out their Bill Buyers stories: that he’s the guy who got Anthony Capozzi arrested for a rape and murder that he didn’t commit but for which he served 22 years in jail; that Buyers last got in trouble when neighbors complained he dragged his dog on a leash hanging out his truck window; that he foots the bill for big breakfasts for 200 people once a month at the VFW post on Amherst Street; that he is protected by strong political ties.

Plus there’s the rumor that led me to file my FOIL in the first place, before Buyers got busted using the Mayor’s Impact Team to spring-clean his own front yard. More on that soon, I hope.

Day 1 of my FOIL watch was a bust: Friday flew by with nary a word from Peter Cutler, director of communications for Mayor Byron Brown. I filed a request with Cutler Thursday evening under New York’s Freedom of Information Law for all budget and expenditure records for the Mayor’s Impact Team since January 1, 2006. By law he’s got five business days just to acknowledge my email request, then a month to fulfill it or explain why he won’t.

Of course, Cutler must have had a busy day on Friday, what with TV crews taping Mayor’s Impact Team head Bill Buyers and two of his crew working in Buyers’ yard on city time, yielding a followup story in the Buffalo News. Who knew my request would be so timely?

Buyers and his two underlings received 15-day suspensions for the offense, because, according to Cutler, it was a first offense. I’m betting here that a careful audit of the Mayor’s Impact Team, which begins with Cutler acknowledging and fulfilling my FOIL request, will suggest it was not the first time the Mayor’s Impact Team used city time and city-purchased materials for private benefit.

Day 2 of my FOIL watch begins Monday morning.

A couple months ago, fed up with the City of Buffalo’s policy on sharing public documents, I wrote a piece about it. Basically the city’s policy is this: There is no such thing as a public document that can be shared with a citizen without that citizen filing a formal request under the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). The City of Buffalo, in fact, pretends that New York State law compels the city to require a formal FOIL request, even for something so innocuous as the minutes of a meeting that are normally posted online but, for some reason or another, have not been.

That’s nonsense, according to the state’s Committee on Open Government, as I wrote in my article. But the policy allows the city to control and delay the flow of information. In the case of the news media, the policy gives the administration time to anticipate potentially negative stories. The policy forces journalists to pursue information through back channels, which opens their sources to the repercussions that attend breaking the administration’s lockdown policy on sharing information.

The FOIL process comes with built-in delays: The recipient of a request has five business days to acknowledge receipt of your request, even in these modern times when most FOIL requests are filed by email. The recipient has 20 additional business days to provide the information you’ve requested or offer a convincing explanation why they can’t. The city often ignores even those fairly generous constraints.

Why am I rehashing all this today, besides that it’s a frustration that nags at me each and every morning?

Because yesterday afternoon at 5:29pm, I filed a FOIL request with Peter Cutler, Mayor Byron Brown’s director of communications, cutting out the middle men. (This is how it goes usually: You ask the person who might have a document if you can have it; he or she tells you to file a FOIL with Peter Cutler; Cutler forwards your request around and copies in Assistant Corporation Counsel Cavette Chambers; they mull it over; when and if they respond, Chambers forwards the appropriate documents and explanations to you.) The requests asks for all budgeting and expenditure documents related to the Mayor’s Impact Team since January 1, 2006.

I thought that, if only for my own amusement, I’d track the city’s response time. So today is Day 1.

You can read the text of my FOIL request to Peter Cutler after the jump…

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