State Senator Antoine Thompson listens as 27-year incumbent Bill Stachowski tells AV that if re-elected, he will receive the chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, resulting in the much needed resources for Buffalo and Western New York.

Tomorrow morning at the Buffalo Museum of Science, State Senators Antoine M. Thompson and Bill Stachowski will hold a citizens forum on the New York State budget. It’s a “listening tour,” in the political argot of the day, intended to solicit feedback from voters and organizations affected by the looming sate budget deficits.

Stachowski, who had campaigned on the certainty of being named chair of the state senate’s finance committee—and thereby directing barrels and barrels of pork to Western New York—recently was gamed out of that job in a deal between incoming senate majority leader Malcolm Smith and downstate dissident Democrats.

Stachowski will instead be named a “deputy majority leader,” whatever that means. (Quick, without looking: Name one of the current deputy majority leaders. Hint: One is from Western New York.)

Tomorrow’s forum begins at 9am and runs to 2pm.

The Ciminelli proposal

The J.W. Pitts proposal

—Somehow former Common Council President Jim Pitts’ proposal to develop a crappy-looking Wingate Inn attached to Shanghai Red’s beside the Erie Basin Marina has been selected as a the preferred alternative by the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency. Ciminelli Development put forth a much more ambitious, mixed-use concept that, supporters claim, would generate far greater tax revenue for the city.

You can look at more pictures and read the howling over at BuffaloRising and BuffaloPundit.

Ciminelli’s plan was dismissed because it exceeded the RFP’s size limitations—guidelines that the Ciminelli team claims they were never told about.  Common Councilmembers Franczyk, LoCurto, and Kearns, who sit on the BURA board, cried foul, but to no avail: Mayor Byron Brown and members of his administration, who comprise a majority of the BURA board, wanted to give the project to J.W. Pitts Properties. Nobody seems to know why, not yet anyway.

Oh well.

—State Senator Bill Stachowski is not going to be chair of the Senate Finance Committee after all. Instead, the position that Stachowski thought was in the bag will go to Carl Kruger of Brooklyn as a reward for threatening to caucus with Republicans and holding back support for Malcolm Smith as majority leader. Back in October, when a poll showed former Buffalo Police Detective Dennis Delano 13 points ahead of Stachowski, state Democrats rushed to Stachowski’s aid. Antoine Thompson, who was a central figure in the Democrats’ effort to gain a majority in the state senate, stood beside Stachowski on Court Street while the veteran senator explained what a devastating loss his seniority would be for Western New Yorkers.

Oh well.

—M&T Bank’s Robert Wilmers, now doing a turn as chief of Empire State Development Corporation, apparently thrilled the Buffalo News’ editorial board with his observation during a talk on Tuesday that the state ought to invest in big projects in Niagara Falls, our region’s architectural treasures, and Buffalo’s waterfront.

Oh boy.