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.

Bryon McIntyre

Buffalo fireman Bryon McIntyre lost his tenuous lead in the three-way race for the third and final at-large seat on the Buffalo school board today, when absentee ballots were tallied. Incumbent Florence Johnson won the seat; McIntyre fell behind both Johnson and incumbent Catherine Collins.

So it’s John Licata, Chris Jacobs, and Florence Johnson in the at-large seats.

McIntyre stopped by the Artvoice offices after the voted were counted. You can watch Buck Quigley’s interview with him on AVTV in the morning.

Over at the Buffalo News, Peter Simon keeps insisting that the election was a referendum on Superintendent James Williams. I guess there’s an argument to be made there, though I think that’s simplistic.

This, though is puzzling. Simon writes:

The chances of Buffalo Schools Superintendent James A. Williams retaining majority support on the Buffalo Board of Education brightened today when incumbent Florence D. Johnson captured the board’s third at-large seat…

With Johnson, Williams has four supporters on the board. With Licata, he’s got five critics. Are things really so bright for Williams?

Yesterday the Erie County Board of Elections double-checked the voting machines retallied the ballots cast last Tuesday in the Board of Education at-large races. Incumbent Florence Johnson picked up 20 votes, while challenger Bryon McIntyre picked up 12. So, in the race for the still contested third seat, McIntryre leads Johnson by 50 votes and incumbent Catherine Collins by 63 votes.

The absentee ballots will be counted tomorrow at 10am.

On Saturday, Fred Yellen was scratched from the list of school board candidates for having insufficient signatures on his nomination petitions. Count this as a win for Herbert Bellamy, Jr., and Buffalo-Niagara Partnership Director of Government Relations Glenn Aronow—whose signatures appear on the specific objections paperwork, filed April 18.

The Buffalo-Niagara Partnership backs the incumbent slate of Collins, Jacobs, and Johnson through a “coalition” they call Buffalo Students First. Aronow claims they have also raised money and donated staff assistance to these candidates.

Challengers Rebekah Williams and John Licata’s petitions were still being challenged as of this morning. In the event they too are struck from the ballot, the field would shrink from nine candidates to six, one week before the election. This would leave Patricia Devis, Rosanna Hampton, and Bryon McIntyre as the only challengers to Collins, Jacobs, and Johnson.

No challenges were ever filed for the signature petitions of the incumbents.

Don’t forget tonight’s candidates forum at the Polish Cadets Hall, Grant and Amherst Street, 7-9pm.

Election Day is next Tuesday, May 5. In the last at-large Buffalo school board election, in 2004, fewer than 13,000 people voted. That’s only around 8% of registered voters. The winners will serve Buffalo’s schoolchildren for the next five years.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 21 at 6:30pm, stop by the True Bethel Baptist Church (907 East Ferry) where all of the candidates but one have agreed to attend a forum organized by the Coalition for Economic Justice. Incumbent Florence Johnson has not yet confirmed her participation, according to an event coordinator.

Candidates will have (more…)

I went down to the Erie County board of elections today and bought $1.75 worth of public documents.

Click here and you can have the same information for free. You’ll learn that of the nine candidates running for the three at-large board seats, only the three incumbents—Catherine Collins, Chris Jacobs, and Florence Johnson—have not had objections filed regarding their nominating petitions.

Who filed the objections to the challengers’ paperwork? Herbert Bellamy Jr., Elaine Mootry, and Cassandra Cosby. Bellamy objects to the petitions submitted by Patricia E. Devis and Frank Yellen. Mootry objects to the petitions submitted by Rebekah A Williams and John B. Licata. Cosby objects to the petitions submitted by Rosalind J. Hampton and Bryon McIntyre.

Interestingly, all the paperwork was notarized by Glenn S Aronow, all on the same day: April 13.  Coincidence?

I could only find a phone number for Mootry, and when I called, someone told me she wasn’t home and didn’t know when she would be back. While trying to find contact information for Aronow, I came across his facebook page.

Granted, he’s just the Niagara county notary who witnessed the petitions, but isn’t it interesting that, according to his facebook page, he’s a fan of another facebook page called Chris Jacobs—Supporters for Buffalo Public School Board, and also a fan of the facebook page called Catherine Collins, Chris Jacobs & Florence Johnson for Buffalo School Board.

Petitioners have until Monday, April 20 to list reasons why they are petitioning the paperwork of every single candidate who is not an incumbent. And since these clarifications are valid if they are postmarked by April 20, we won’t know until the middle of next week what, if anything, they were suspicious of regarding the challengers’ petitions. By then, the actual election will be less than two weeks away.

The Buffalo School Board has fiscal oversight to the tune of over $1.5 billion yearly.

We’ll be following up in the coming weeks to let the less than 5% of registered voters who typically turn up for Buffalo school board elections get a feel for the challengers. In the meantime, here’s just one little reminder of the kind of leadership our current at-large school board representatives have given us.

Join us as we take a little walk down memory lane in the coming weeks, revisiting more of the work Collins, Jacobs, and Johnson have done “for the children.”

And remember, with this big a field and so few voters, anything can happen once educated citizens pull the curtain on the voting booth. They might even decide it’s time for a change.