Word is that Brian Davis will resign claims he is not resigning the Ellicott District Common Council seat this afternoon at one o’clock, after pleading guilty this morning to two criminal charges brought by New York State Police in Judge Thomas Amodeo’s court.

Not a lot of callbacks on this story: Brian Davis isn’t answering his cell phone (his voicemail is full); Davis’s staff isn’t answering their phones, though a friend just strolled by his office and says they’re in there; the troopers have not returned calls.

So who will fill the Ellicott District seat? Word is that Mayor Byron Brown’s camp favors moving Erie County Legislator Barbara Miller-Williams into Davis’s seat, and with Janique Curry filling Miller-Williams’s seat. Attorney Bill Trezevant has had his eye on the seat for some times, as has firefighter Bryon McIntyre, who primaried Davis two years ago.

Under the rule adopted after Mickey Kearns won the South District seat vacated by Jimmy Griffin in 2005, the Common Council must advertise the vacancy, accept resumes, interview qualified candidates in public hearings, then vote in a replacement. In the past, the recommendation of Democratic district committee members was sacrosanct when it came to filling vacant seats, but the Common Council itself has the final say — if the committee members recommend someone the majority doesn’t care for, the Council could vote in someone else.

Champ Eve, son of the the legendary Arthur Eve, controls a substantial number of Democratic committee seats in the Ellicott District, as does Niagara District Councilman David Rivera and a number of others generally opposed to Grassroots, the mayor’s political organization. (Grassroots has some committee seats, too, but was greatly weakened in Ellicott in last year’s election.) So any candidate recommended by the party in Ellicott District is likely to be independent of the mayor. The question is whether that candidate will give the current five-member mjaority voting bloc and six-member super-majority that could ovverride Brown’s veto.

Just in time for the annual haggle over the capital budget.

UPDATE: Oh, right the charges: Jim Heaney of the Buffalo News, who’s been bird-dogging Davis all year, says it was personal use of campaign funds.He also pled guilty to filing incomplete campaign finance disclosure forms.

Davis’s lawyer said in court that the councilman did not intend to resign. I guess we’ll see: Erie County Legislator Butch Holt was removed from office when he ran afoul of the law, under the auspices of New York State’s Public Officers Law. Davis is reportedly  on his way to be fingerprinted and photographed right now. How can he stay in office if Holt had to go?

Erie County DA Frank Sedita will hold a press conference at 2pm.

Yesterday an anonymous commenter left this note on the long-abandoned blog of  Ellicott District Councilman Brian Davis:

Anonymous said…

November 05, 2009

How could you?

Good question.

Here is mayor Byron Brown cutting a ribbon with Brian Davis on June 4, as covered by BuffaloRising.com.

But now with the election fast-approaching, he brought out the big scissors on Sunday for the opening of two-way traffic on the 700 block of Main Street, according to the Buffalo News.

Then, just this morning, he was at MLK park for another ribbon-cutting with Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples and Common Council member Demone Smith, according to this press release from the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy.

This makes two ribbons cut in 48 hours for Brown.

Can he keep up this break-neck pace until the Democratic primary on September 15? Everyone knows how dangerous it is to run with scissors.

Four items of interest:

—Byron Brown wins the endorsement of Goin’ South, the South Buffalo political organization stacked with city employees. No surprise there; there was no chance that Ray McGurn and Goin’ South would buck the mayor and his allies Brian Higgins, Mark Schroeder, and Tim Kennedy. Still, it’s a show of force for Brown.

—Mickey Kearns wins the endorsement of the Police Benevolent Association. No surprise there, either: What was Bob Meegan to do, spin around and embrace a mayor who keeps dragging the PBA to court and losing? (It’d be informative to get a breakdown of the City of Buffalo’s legal expenses fighting the PBA over the past three years, including time spent by the Corporation Counsel.) The PBA is Kearns’s first union endorsement, but how much good will it do him? There are 700-odd cops in the BPD, plus support staff, but lot of cops live and vote in the suburbs. Nonetheless, Kearns needed an endoresement like this and now he has it.

—Jim Heaney reported in Sunday’s Buffalo News that the FBI, US Attorney, Erie County DA, and New York State Police are all in some manner or another investigating Buffalo’s City Hall. Some are looking at Brian Davis’s finances, some at BERC and One Sunset, some at the city’s use of HUD money. Heaney did well to confirm these investigations are occurring; it’s hard to get beyond a no comment on these matters. His article also offers a review of the cavalcade of scandals rolling out of City Hall over the past few months.

—Most interesting to me, however, is this story by Susan Schulman, about a Cleveland developer whose East Side housing project was nixed after the Jeremiah Project, a group run by the influential Reverend Richard Stenhouse, failed to win a contract to oversee minority hiring on the project. (For the sake of argument, I’m leaving alone the merits of NRP’s project. In any case, Stenhouse’s objections seem thin, since the Jeremiah Project has been lead agency in similar low/mod rental housing development themselves.) Schulman is admirably careful about what she implies in her story, but it reads to me like a classic Buffalo shakedown: Stenhouse, in a position to stall a project, seeks a part of it. When he doesn’t get the contract, he helps to kill the project.

Why is this much more to me interesting than Heaney’s article? Because, whereas a local developer might take this setback stoically in hopes of working another day, a developer from Cleveland may not fear the consequences of speaking out. This is the sort of thing that raises eyebrows at the FBI.

Buffalo Rising has posted Brian Davis’s Facebook page response to Jim Heaney’s front-page analysis of his personal financial history in last Sunday’s Buffalo News. Shame on me for not beating them to it: A friend emailed this to me on Monday, but I honestly thought it was a joke:

Happy Easter! I just wanted to take this opportunity to say, “thank you” to all of you whom shown support and offered words of encouragement as I have endured major public scrutiny over the last 8 weeks. Recognizing, that as a “Public Official”, public scrutiny is something I must deal with and at the same time be held accountable.

The most recent article published in the Buffalo News was filled with slander and inaccuracies and put me off as a “Deadbeat”.  Everyone that knows me know that if there is nothing more important to me, my kids are my pride and joy! I proud my myself on knowing this to be a fact and more importantly, knowing that I place my kids before my own selfish needs. More importantly, to see nonsense published makes me wonder who they are talking about, where did this info come from and why did it make front page of the newspaper?

Well let me tell you, this info is attributed to the Democratic Party, one developer, and the news repeated role in trying to pick their own elected officials to represent what is known as districts commonly represented by “blacks!” This is evidenced by the successful attempt to rid the Buffalo Common Council of representatives like, James Pitts, Charley Fisher and Beverly Gray and now the methodical attempt to rid the City of Buffalo of myself and MAYOR BYRON BROWN.

I refuse to allow this to go any further and now have vowed that I will be fighting back, speaking the truth, letting everyone who cares to know what is really going on regularly. Equally important I will be re-doubling my efforts to make the Ellicott District (City of Buffalo) the best district in the City of Buffalo. We can not allow for those that had a small monopoly on this city continue to play these games, choose our Mayor AND Councilmembers or pimp our communities any longer.

THE FIRST THING THAT I AM ASKING IS THAT ALL THOSE THAT HAVE A HOME DELIVERY OF THE BUFFALO NEWS CALL 842-1111 AND CANCEL YOUR
SUBSCRIPTION OF THE PAPER.  IF YOU ARE IN FACT READING THIS EMAIL, YOU HAVE INTERNET SERVICE AND YOU CAN READ THE NEWS ON-LINE FOR FREE. SHOULD YOU NEED TO PHYSICALLY READ THE PAPER, YOU CAN PICK IT UP AT ANY STORE OR BUY FROM AGENTS STANDING ON MANY OF THE CORNERS. THESE FOLKS GET A % OF THE MONEY THEY TURN IN. YOU CAN HELP IN THIS SMALL WAY TO KEEP THESE AGENTS EMPLOYED AND TAKE MONEY OUT OF THE NEWS POCKET!

This is a very small way you can stand up for your community, show your support for progress and send a clear message to the news that their lies, slander, attacks, and control will no longer be tolerated.

When calling the news to cancel your subscription, let them know that you have had it with their attacks on your community and I encourage you to get 3 others to do the same. WATCH WHAT THIS SMALL DEED WILL DO TO STOP THE NONSENSE OF THE BUFFALO NEWS, I PROMISE!

That “one developer,” I assume, is Davis’s nemesis, Carl Paladino. Paladino has long complained about Davis’s failure to file campaign finance disclosure forms with the state, and he certainly has little positive to say about Davis as a public servant, but to my knowledge Paladino never spread stories of the sort that Heaney found: the failure to pay child support, the suspension of his driver’s license, a suspended campaign account, a litany of bad checks, tax liens, etc. None of those stories came my way from folks in Len Lenihan’s Democratic headquarters, and I don’t think anyone whispered these stories into Heaney’s ear, either. They’re public records. If Heaney and I have anything to apologize for, it’s not digging up this stuff earlier.

It’s typical of Buffalo’s politicians to spin criticism as politically motivated. Davis says he’s going to start “speaking the truth” in regard to these matters. I’m eager for him to begin. He’s been ducking my phone calls and emails for more than two months on these issues alone.

UPDATE: Bill Trezevant, the once and future contender for the Ellicott District Council seat, who wrote the Common Council asking for an investigation into Davis’s behavior, responds to Davis’s insinuation that these revelations are racially motivated attacks:

“Attacks on Me and the Mayor are from the Democratic Party…They are attacks on Black Districts”…

This is the last straw.  The days of Race Wars should have been over when my white Polish mother married my Black father in 1966 when their marriage was illegal under state law.  We as a community have got to come together and say that we want a better tomorrow.  Not one based on race, not one based on gender, but one based on who we can all be, regardless of color.

I don’t know of one section of this city that believes it is “a Black District” or “White District” or “Red District”, but rather as one district.  A district with common hopes, common dreams and common goals.  Mr. Davis after seven years of division now says that the scrutiny on him and the Mayor are because they are “black”, rather than because of what they have done and not done is a slap in the face to every citizen of Buffalo.

I need not go further, except to say that when one is guilty they usually deflect and seek to move the heat to another subject.  In this case, Mr. Davis is trying to do just that.  Mayor, when will you speak out?

Once upon a time, Trezevant and I had harsh words with one another over AV’s treatment of the stewardship of Transfiguration Church on Sycamore Street. He eventually came to convince me that we’d been unfair to him and his partners in that long and star-crossed rehabilitation project, a subject we will revisit someday. In the meantime, I take no position on his candidacy for Davis’s seat, whenever it might be contested. But I agree with him entirely that the suggestion that race motivates reporting on Davis’s financial irresponsibility is absurd and desperate.

Joe Illuzzi reported yesterday that Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis will resign next week:

Ellicott Councilman Brian Davis will resign shortly after surgery next week.”

“Davis has been in ill health for some time; the surgery will address some abdominal issues as well as a tumor located on his hip,” sources continued.

We are being assured that recent rumors & phony allegations brought against Davis by his & the Mayor’s political enemies like Len Lenihan, Carl Paladino, Tom Kobus, et al. have anything to do with his stepping down.

Sources were not in a position to offer any names for Davis’s seat. However, there is expected to be a real donnybrook for the seat because the seat represents the 6th vote making the Council “veto proof”.  The confirmation requires a simple majority in the case of the Buffalo Common Council 5-4.  More later

This is what came later, from Davis himself, according to Illuzzi:

“Joe, I will not be making any definite decisions on my future on the Council until after my health issues have been resolved. At that time I will talk our situation over with my wife, then the Mayor. I will make the political decisions to stay or move on at that time.”

I’d be interested to know Illuzzi’s source for the initial rumor. Because whoever told Illuzzi that story is in a rush to throw Davis under the bus, even before (and assuming that) Jim Heaney’s much anticipated story on Davis breaks in the Buffalo News this Sunday.

The “donnybrook” that Illuzzi anticipates will break out among the Ellicott district committee people, who will recommend a candidate to fill Davis’s seat. Before Mickey Kearns came along, that recommendation pretty well sealed the deal. Kearns introduced a successful initiative to change the process, requiring the Council to advertise the vacancy, accept resumes, and interview candidates.

The new process has been used just once so far, when Antoine Thompson vacated the Masten District seat to go to the state senate. The Council duly interviewed a number of folks, and then chose the candidate recommended by Masten’s committee people: Demone Smith.

The Ellicott District’s committee people are largely controlled by forces aligned with the Council’s five-member majority and against the mayor. (As always, “controlled,” “aligned with,” and “aligned against” are gross simplifications. But I trust the point is clear.) So it seems likely that the candidate recommended by the committee people will be palatable to the five-member majority.

But Illuzzi is correct: There will be a fight.

Two posts below this one, I wrote about a letter filed by Buffalo attorney William F. Trezevant to Buffalo’s Common Council, asking Council President Dave Franczyk to open an ethics investigation into Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis—something well within the purview of the Council.

Brian Meyer of the News reported on Trezevant’s letter later this afternoon.

Well, here’s the latest: Trezevant filed the letter last Thursday. The next day, Friday, Davis started working on City Clerk Gerald Chwalinski to get the letter pulled from the public record.

First, Davis’s office sent word to Chwalinski that Davis intended to speak with Trezevant, who Davis said would agree to pull the letter from the record. Someone from Trezevant’s office would come by to confirm and to retrieve the letter.

Chwalinski, I’m told, waited to hear from Trezevant or Davis, or for someone to come by the City Clerk’s office. No one called, no one  came.

Trezevant tells me that earlier this week, Davis called Chwalinski personally. He says that Davis assured Chwalinski that Trezevant would authorize him to pull the letter from the record.

Trezevant tells me that Chwalinski called him to check if this were true. Trezevant told him that he’d never spoken to Davis and had no intention of pulling the letter. Rather, he stood by the letter 100 percent.

Indeed, Trezevant is so serious that he’s filed a similar letter with Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita, asking the DA’s office to look into the behavior of Davis and into the case of Syaed Ali.

So here’s that matter: If this is all baseless political maneuvering, as Davis suggested to Brian Meyer this afternoon, why is he so eager to have that letter from Trezevant—a call for action that is now part of the public record—be pulled?

I’ve been waiting for Davis to call me back for three weeks on this stuff. (My notebooks say seven calls to his office.) He hasn’t yet. But at least he’s talking to Brian Meyer at the News.

Trezevant’s letter to DA Sedita follows after the jump.

(more…)

Last Thursday, attorney William F. Trezevant filed a letter with Buffalo’s City Clerk, addressed to Common Council President David Franczyk. In the letter, Trezevant formally requested that Franczyk open an investigation into Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis. I’ll paste the whole letter at the end, but here’s the gist: Davis’s check-bouncing may be more than just an isolated incident; he may have used his position as a member of Council to intimidate those with whom he cashed bad checks; and he may have inappropriately steered loans and grants toward One Sunset, the restaurant at the center of Davis’s very public bad check scandal.

For all the reasons, he says, Franczyk should conduct an investigation. For good measure, Trezevant tells Franczyk that the Council ought to investigate the Syaed Ali situation, too.

Now, Davis is likely to dismiss Trezevant’s letter as the work of a political opponent—just as he tried to dismiss allegations by Lower West Side deli owners that he had bounced checks in their stores as rumors spread by political opponents.

In any case, it should make for an interesting Common Council meeting on Tuesday.

The letter:

Honorable David A. Franczyk
President of the Common Council
City of Buffalo
1315 City Hall
65 Niagara Square
Buffalo, New York 14202

March 5, 2009

Dear Councilman Franczyk:

On behalf of a number of Buffalo residents, I am writing to request that the Common Council conduct formal hearings regarding certain matters which are described below.  These matters involve allegations of misconduct elected and appointed city officials, and as such any investigation of these matters properly rests with the Common Council.

First, as you may be aware, there have been a series of published reports regarding the private financial dealings of Councilman Davis.  While this is not normally an item that would lend itself to a Common Council hearing, there are additional facts regarding Mr. Davis, that if true, represents abuse of his official capacity.

In this regard, there have been published reports in the local media, (i.e. Artvoice) that Mr. Davis’s activity of passing bad checks to local businesses is not a singularly isolated event involving the restaurant formerly know as One Sunset.

Rather, there have been allegations made and independently confirmed that Mr. Davis has repeatedly engaged in a systematic pattern of bouncing checks at neighborhood corner stores.  When store owners sought to recoup the monies they had provided to Mr. Davis, these store owners were threatened with the closing of either their businesses or those of their relatives.  When threatened in this manner, the store owners chose to abandon their collection efforts.

The point here is clear.  These allegations, if true, constitute a criminal offense.  Moreover, the pattern of criminal activity combined with the threat to use his elected position to single out and punish his victims is an outrageous abuse of public office.  Normally these criminal matters would be investigated by the Buffalo Police Department, but in this case, Mr. Davis sits as the Chair of the Buffalo Police Oversight Committee.  As a result, none of these allegations have been investigated by anyone except the media which has been able to confirm the allegations.  I am requesting that the Council perform an investigation of these issues.

Second, there have been allegations made that Mr. Davis has used public monies for his private enterprises.  To wit, there has been a particularly disturbing assertion that CBDG monies which were designated for the Ellicott District were instead directed to the One Sunset business.  In addition, there is an allegation that BERC monies were also used to assist the One Sunset business, monies that were redirected from other projects.

There is no way to independently ascertain the truth or falsity of these allegations.  Thus, I am requesting that the Council perform an investigation of these issues as well.

Third, as you may know, on November 7, 2008, members of the Buffalo Police Department searched the home of Syaed Ali at his Breckenridge address.  Pursuant to this search, a number of his belongings were confiscated. Subsequent to this search, Buffalo Police Officers questioned Mr. Ali regarding his connection local elected officials, including City of Buffalo Council Members.  It has now been approximately 16 ½ weeks and his property has not been returned, nor have any formal charges been filed against Mr. Ali.  What is particularly troubling is the role of the Buffalo Police Department in this matter.

Under normal circumstances, the Chair of the Buffalo Police Oversight Committee would be charged with conducting just such an investigation.  However, there has been no such hearing inasmuch as Mr. Davis is the Chair of the Committee and is apparently embroiled in his own issues which may or may not be the subject of a Buffalo Police investigation itself.

As a result, the important work of the Common Council regarding serious issues has gone wanting.  There is a distinct and palatable disdain and mistrust with open discussions of a coordinated cover-up of these issues.  The Common Council is the only body with the ability to investigate these matters and I hereby request that the Common Council do so.  In addition, I request that the Common Council remove Mr. Davis as the Chair of the Buffalo Police Oversight Committee given the obvious conflict of interest.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.

Very truly yours,

William F. Trezevant, Esq.

Cc:     City Clerk
Common Council

Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis is back in City Hall today, after a two-week medical leave that he happened to take just as charges surfaced that he bounced a check for more than $3,500 and skipped out on a private loan of $5,000 more. Brian Meyer of the Buffalo News writes:

When pressed by a reporter today to discuss the controversy, Davis would only say he expects the issue to be “resolved” by the end of the week.

“It’s in the hands of my attorney right now,” he said.

Davis also declined to discuss reports published in ArtVoice that other unidentified store owners on the Lower West Side and East Side have had problems with some of the lawmakers’ checks. Davis would only say the allegations were spread by a “political opponent.”

You can read the story Meyer refers to here. Basically, a bunch of Lower West Side deli owners grudgingly admitted to me that they’d had problems with Davis cashing checks in their stores, and that they were afraid to talk about it because Davis had the power to have their operating licenses pulled.

Brian Davis

I first heard stories about Davis passing bad checks several months ago, from someone who has alternately been an ally of and had run-ins with Davis. It’s true that this particular story, about the deli owners, was brought to me by Bryon McIntyre, who challenged Davis in the 2007 Democratic primary for the Ellicott seat. (I indicated as much in my article.) But I checked the allegations by visiting the delis where McIntyre had heard complaints, plus several more.

So in the end, the allegations come from the deli owners themselves, not from Davis’s political rivals. Last week, neither Davis nor his attorney would respond to these allegations. This doesn’t seem much of a response, either. The deli owners have no political relationship with Davis, for or against, as far as I can tell.

I called Davis’s attorney today to ask him again about these allegations, plus a few more. He hasn’t called back yet. When he does, I plan to ask him a few questions about the accepted narrative of this scandal: What compelled Davis to step in and write a rent check for the failing restaurant One Sunset, when he could not afford to do so? I have a copy of the ethics disclosure form Davis filed with Buffalo’s City Clerk for 2008, and he indicates no business association with One Sunset—no business associations at all, in fact. If Davis was not a partner in the restaurant, why would he make trouble for a failing business and himself by writing that check to Kevin Brinkworth, One Sunset’s landlord?

The other question is how One Sunset managed to fail so quickly and completely, despite $80,000 in loans from BERC (now in default), another $50,000 in loans from ECIDA (possibly in default, too, though I have not been able to confirm this), a $20,000 community development block grant to overhaul the facade, and a lot of good press (including a positive review from this newspaper, for what that’s worth). We’ll continue looking into the story of One Sunset’s failure, its defaulted loans, and Davis’s apparent interest in keeping the place afloat.

Frank LoTempio III, attorney for Councilmember Brian Davis, talks to Channel 7's Steve Barber outside D District headquarters.

In today’s print edition, I write about allegations that Brian Davis has bounced checks at corner stores on the Lower West Side, in addition to the bad check he is alleged to have used to pay Kevin Brinkworth for rent on One Sunset, the Delaware Avenue restaurant that closed in December.

As indicated, at press time yesterday, I had not heard back from Davis or his attorney, Frank LoTempio III, in regard to these allegations. I still have not heard from Davis, but LoTempio called me yesterday evening, after the paper had gone to press. He said he was unaware of those allegations and so could not comment on them.

When I asked whether the Buffalo Police investigation into Davis extended beyond the bad check he’s alleged to have passed to Brinkworth, LoTempio replied, “Not as far as I know.”

FURTHER UPDATE: I meant to link to this penetrating article by Frank Brutus at the Buffalo Ruse, about a proposal to brand a stretch of Fillmore Avenue as “Little Baghdad.” (Because if it’s appropriate to brand Hertal as “Little Italy”…) Read to the bottom for the dig at Davis:

Ellicott Council Member Brian Davis, challenging other Council members to step up their support for “Little Baghdad,” presented to Mr. Washington a personal check for $100,000.00. “Don’t cash it until Friday, though,” he said.