Almost four months after the Buffalo School Board Election which took place on May 5, a new court decision may shed more light on the political contributions made to current board member Christopher L. Jacobs.

Four months? Why so long?

Because in that time, despite our efforts in court, Jacobs has still not filed complete campaign finance disclosure forms. We feel we’re just pursuing accurate information, and that takes time, not to mention expert legal representation from Peter A. Reese.

Jacobs’s attorney, Paul G. Joyce (pictured), disputes our motives. He claimed in an affidavit to the court that we were capriciously and frivolously trying “to harass and maliciously injure Mr. Jacobs.”

The Hon. Frederick J. Marshall did not agree. Here’s the transcript of Tuesday’s proceedings, including his ruling from the bench.

On July 17, two months after the filing deadline, and without notice to the litigants pursuing the records (us), or to the courts, Jacobs filed a somewhat more complete campaign finance disclosure form with the Buffalo Board of Education. That filing omits addresses and full names of contributors. Nonetheless, Joyce used that belated, incomplete, and unannounced filing as a rationale for calling our litigation frivolous and capricious. Here’s the affidavit. At the end of that document, you’ll find Jacobs’s July 17 disclosure. Click here to read Reese’s responding affirmation.

Let the guessing games begin. Assign last names to first names in the document, or vice versa, and win fabulous prizes from Artvoice for accuracy, and/or originality. Judging will take place if and when Jacobs meets the judge’s order to comply with the law within 20 days.

Despite Joyce’s claim, this all began because we were interested not so much in Jacobs, but in an undocumented and seemingly illegal entity created by the Buffalo Niagara Partnership called Buffalo Students First. The group spent more than $30,000 to back the incumbent at-large candidates in May’s school board election.

According to Jacobs’s July 17 filing, his campaign spent almost $54,000 on top of whatever backing he received from the Partnership.

Buffalo Niagara Partnership President and CEO Andrew Rudnick writes in a letter published by the Buffalo News that Delaware North Companies should run the Aqueduct horse track in Queens. Delaware North has a well-known interest in these kinds of operations.

The note stresses that the team (Aqueduct Gaming) involved in the deal are New York companies: Saratoga Gaming and Raceway, McKissack & McKissack (whose Web site says the company was founded in 1990 in Washington, DC before expanding into the Chicago market and now has offices in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta and Orlando), Shawmut (with offices in Boston, New York, Providence, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and New Haven), and Thalden Emery (with offices in Las Vegas, Phoenix, St. Louis, and Tulsa).

Finally, the letter states that the selection of Aqueduct Gaming would mean 100 new jobs in Buffalo. Says this is a “test of whether New York’s elected ‘leaders’ will support the state’s businesses.”

I put down the paper and called Andrew Rudnick to request a list of these local jobs. I was forwarded to the voice mail of Emily Alexandria Burns, Communications Manager for the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. I left a message on her office phone and her cell phone. I put in a follow-up call and was directed to Nadine Clancy, handling Business Intelligence at the Partnership. Nadine said she’d try to find someone who could answer my question.

It seemed like a simple question, seeing as the letter published today, but I guess not. I just put in another call, and was told that Emily was on a conference call and couldn’t talk to me. However, the receptionist sent her an email asking her to call me. She said Emily would be the one for me to talk to, since she’s the Communications Manager.

As soon as someone gets back to me with a list of the 100 new jobs that are hanging in the balance, I will publish it here.

From the “Snappy Answers to Stupid Claims” department…

On page A3 of today’s Buffalo News, you can read the full-color, full-page open letter to the community from The Buffalo Niagara Partnership Executive Committee, also known as “the usual suspects.”

Question: What kind of Chamber of Commerce is so jittery about its public image that it feels the need to buy such expensive ad space in an attempt to convince the community it allegedly serves that things are on the right track?

Here are the things the BNP is taking credit for:

UB 2020 established as the regional priority for Albany action

Unfortunately, it’s a plan rooted in the dream that public money should be spent with no oversight. This is a plan? Why not just propose robbing Fort Knox? Both plots are illegal. Only difference is when the UB plan fails, the perpetrators won’t go to jail, they’ll just blame “politics as usual” for foiling their dubious scheme.

Modernization of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport and bringing low-cost carriers to our region

Just how much more modernization needs to be done at the airport? Transporter machines? This place has been modernized so many times you’d think we’d be zipping around it like the Jetsons wearing jet packs.

Construction of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and creation of nearly 5,000 jobs in the life sciences

Sure. How are things progressing with the dissolution of ECMC as a public benefit corporation? Don’t mind me, just a taxpayer, just asking.

Federal Courthouse going up on Delaware Avenue

Really? Taking credit for this? I had no idea a group of local businessmen exerted such influence on the Federal Government. Should be a busy place.

Development of more than 1,000 lofts, apartments and condos in downtown Buffalo—a place very few people lived in just a decade ago

Over the past 16 years, Andrew Rudnick has made like $6 million dollars in salary as head of BNP. Buffalo is the third poorest city in the nation, and lots of people live downtown. They just don’t have much food, and little shelter.

Demolition of the Aud and significant work on the outer and inner harbors

Excellent. Destroy a monument to American War Veterans in the hope of luring a fishing store. Better throw a few more buckets of tax breaks into the water. Drives ‘em into a feeding frenzy.

Retention of the Niagara Air Reserve Station

“Retention” sounds so much better than “reduction.”

Creation of Charter Schools throughout the region

Why shouldn’t we be discovering more ways to siphon public education funding into private enterprises? Think about the kids.

Downsizing of the Buffalo Common Council
The benefits of this accomplishment are all around us, for everyone to see.

Introduction of an affordable Enhanced Drivers License as an alternative to passports at the border

I don’t know whether I should feel safer or more of a sucker. Maybe I should buy a Nexus card for good measure.

Business Backs the Bills effort, which kept the team here

Which, for nine days every fall, guarantees a surge in alcohol related arrests for local law enforcement.

“Some of our success, however, is largely invisible,” the ad crows. Yeah, we know all about it. Invisible like the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Here’s the decision and order handed down by Judge Frederick J. Marshall today, regarding the show cause order brought Monday, May 4, to compel the speedy disclosure of campaign finance information pertinent to the Tuesday, May 5 Buffalo school board election.

In a nutshell, we, the plaintiffs, lost. Marshall ruled that we “did not exhaust (our) administrative remedies” under FOIL. Of course, exhausting our administrative remedies would have provided us with the information only long after the school board election was over, so what were a handful of curious citizens to do?

Speaking to this issue, the Judge writes: “As enunciated by this Court at a hearing held on May 4, 2009, Section 1529 of the Education Law does not require the Clerk to make copies of candidates’ financial disclosure statements, but only provides that the records ’shall be open to public inspection.’ Such is the will of the New York State Legislature with respect to financial disclosure of Board of Education candidates, even though with respect to other elections, copies of financial disclosures are freely provided to members of the public and the requirements of FOIL are not, to the knowledge of this Court, ever invoked. The New York State Legislature is advised to address this issue should it so desire.” (emphasis added)

Addressing the issue of Buffalo Students First expenditures, “the Court finds that there is no evidence supporting the petitioner’s contention that the expenditures by Buffalo Students First were made with the permission of any of the respondent candidates. And while Education Law Section 1528(1)(c) does not require a non-candidate to list expenditures, the statement filed by Buffalo Students first lists expenditures of over $30,000, exceeding the $25 limit imposed by that section. Again, however, the Legislature has provided no remedy to an aggrieved party, nor does it define such conduct as a criminal offense. Again, this is an area that the Legislature is advised to address should it so desire.” (emphasis added)

Further, “Since Buffalo Students First, as an affiliate of Buffalo Niagara Partnership, has filed its required disclosure statement pursuant to Section 1528(1)(c) of the Education Law that portion of the petition requiring them to do so is dismissed as moot. This Court has not overlooked the fact that the statement filed by Buffalo Students First was not filed until after this proceeding was commenced. The statute implies, in this Court’s opinion, that a sworn statement should have been filed with the Clerk and the Commissioner prior to the making of such expenditures. Yet again, the Legislature provides no remedy.” (emphasis added)

While further legal actions are being contemplated, we hope the suggestions of the Court are considered by State Legislators Crystal Peoples and Antoine Thompson, who both appeared on a Buffalo Students First mailer supporting the incumbent school board candidates—mailed in violation of the Education Law spending limits, and likely the statute that prohibits the use of assumed names which have not been properly registered.

Maybe they can introduce changes to the Education Law in Albany that would bring it more in step with Election Law when it comes to the release of campaign finance information to the public and the press.

In which Buffalo Rising regurgitates statements from the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and Grassroots.

If this post is, as its title would indicate, simply a “Reminder to Vote,” then why not mention the names of the challengers? Why quote only two organizations that are endorsing the incumbents?

Even Peter Simon’s fairly tepid piece in today’s Buffalo News—which openly endorsed the three incumbents on its op-ed pages—acknowledges that there is opposition to those three, and even perhaps some nebulous, hard-to-report controversy about the way the Buffalo Niagara Partnership (”business interests,” Simon writes vaguely) pumped money into their campaigns. (Hard-t0-report unless you’re us, who took them to court, or Channel 4’s Rich Newberg, who picked up on it yesterday.)

Come on, BRO. If you’re endorsing a candidate, just say so and tell us why. Not someone else’s reasons. Your own.

A QUICK AFTERTHOUGHT: One of the commenters on the BRO post suggests the same critique could be made of Artvoice: Our coverage of this school board race has been good, the commenter says, but biased; we clearly oppose the three incumbents but have not explicitly endorsed.

Fair enough, I guess, though I would add that we are not biased for anyone. Most of our coverage has been about finances and process; it just so happens that that coverage (so far) has reflected badly on the incumbents and their supporters. We tend to think a change would do the school board good, but we’re not endorsing any one or any two or three of the challengers.

Artvoice has obtained this email sent today from Buffalo Niagara Partnership President & CEO Andrew Rudnick, imploring the receiver to forward it to “colleagues, friends and family, especially those who are registered voters in the city of Buffalo – and ask them to forward it along to others.”

Even though it didn’t land in my email directly, we thought it would be a nice gesture to shine a light on it for all our readers.

This intimate appeal is in addition to the over $30,000 in assistance the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and/or their offshoot Buffalo Students First (which has yet to file a DBA, as we learned in court today) has spent promoting the incumbent school board candidates in tomorrow’s election. The incumbents did not authorize the support from Buffalo Students First, and the assistance they provided was over the $25 limit prescribed by law—by at least $30,000 as of April 30.

Tomorrow, May 5, elections for the Buffalo Public School Board will be held.

Please forward this email to colleagues, friends and family, especially those who are registered voters in the city of Buffalo – and ask them to forward it along to others. Buffalo School Board elections (given they are months from “general election day”) have dismal turnout, and races often have been decided by a few hundred votes. Thus, each vote can make a big difference.

The Partnership is supporting at-large candidates Dr. Catherine Collins, Florence Johnson and Christopher Jacobs. We believe these candidates are the best qualified to manage the schools’ $600+ million budget, will stand up in favor of reform in the system and are not beholden to the efforts of Buffalo Teacher Federation President Philip Rumore — which for too long have obstructed the change that is in the best interest of Buffalo’s school children.

Why should you care? Even if you don’t have children in the Buffalo Public Schools?

1). Buffalo is our region’s core  — and the success or failure of the Buffalo Public Schools is directly linked to how the city fares. Currently:

Buffalo is the nation’s third-poorest city, according to the U.S. Census.
The Buffalo metro area has the highest black male jobless rate (51.4 percent) among American’s 35 large cities, according to figures cited by Professor Marc V. Levine of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Nearly two-thirds of adults in Buffalo function at the two lowest levels of literacy, meaning they can’t function at the minimum level of literacy employers in our region require for any job higher than entry level.
Thirty-five percent of Buffalo Public School children don’t graduate high school.
2). At a time when many students are not graduating from high school prepared for postsecondary education and work, 60 percent of the new jobs being created require advanced training or a college education. If our region’s workforce can’t meet employer needs, we will lose existing companies, and will not be able to recruit new businesses to invest in our region.

3). The availability of high-quality human talent is a top issue facing businesses today. Nationwide, business leaders increasingly place improving public education at the top of their list of priorities because they believe the education system in the United States fails to produce graduates prepared to compete both locally and in a global economy.

Buffalo’s young people deserve a better future, and our employers need them to graduate from public school prepared to contribute to the local workforce – in order ensure their own businesses have future viability in our community. Public education in the city is one place to start, and the Buffalo Public School Board elections will play no minor part.

Please vote tomorrow for Dr. Catherine Collins, Florence Johnson and Christopher Jacobs. Thanks – a lot of our future depends on the outcome.
Andrew J. Rudnick
President & CEO
P:  (716) 852-7100
F:  (716) 852-1756

Jody Vohwinkel, Executive Assistant to the President & CEO
jvohwinkel@thepartnership.org

The Partnership extends its thanks to the member businesses in its Leadership Circle.
These companies represent the Partnership’s most significant financial supporters.

WIVB Channel 4 reporter Rich Newberg just reported on today’s lawsuit during the 5pm broadcast. Tune in WIVB at 6pm tonight for more details.

Buffalo school board elections are tomorrow, May 5. Don’t forget to vote.

What’s the message Buffalo Students First is sending to voters this weekend promoting the incumbent candidates, three days before the school board election? That depends on where you live in the city of Buffalo.

First, here’s a mailer sent by Buffalo Students First to voters in the 144th Assembly District, represented by Sam Hoyt. The message on the back begins: “The politicians and special interest groups want to take over control of our schools. We can’t allow that to happen…”

If that’s the case, what does one make of  this mailer sent by Buffalo Students First to city voters in the 141st Assembly District, represented by Crystal Peoples? Voters there, primarily African-American, received an open letter from Mayor Byron Brown, Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples, and State Senator Antoine Thompson, endorsing the incumbent slate of Florence Johnson, Catherine Collins, and Chris Jacobs.

Are Brown, Peoples, and Thompson not politicians? And is Buffalo Students First and/or the Buffalo Niagara Partnership  not a special interest group? News Flash: THE POLITICIANS AND SPECIAL INTERESTS CURRENTLY HAVE CONTROL OF OUR SCHOOLS. And it’s clear they will spend a great deal of money in the hope of keeping it that way.

The blatant hypocrisy displayed by Buffalo Students First in sponsoring these two divergent messages should be offensive to every voter in the city. But there’s plenty of shame to go around here. Why would Brown, Peoples, and Thompson lend their support to a slate of candidates in an election that is held in May for the express reason that it should not  be political?

And why would the Buffalo Niagara Partnership hide behind a phony name like Buffalo Students First, when it is clear that they are directly involved in the funding of this campaign that preaches two different messages to urban voters based largely on the color of their skin? The evidence of their involvement is here in this one-page financial disclosure form, signed by Glenn Aronow, Director of Government Relations for the Buffalo Niagara Partnership.

Then there’s Saturday’s Buffalo News, which contains this editorial endorsing the incumbents.

(While writing this blog, I have received a report from a resident of University Heights that all the cars in the neighborhood had anonymous flyers on the windshield this morning, referencing this Buffalo News endorsement of the status quo.)

“Ideally, a School Board member encompasses a strong work ethic, willingness to do the necessary homework and the ability to ask the right questions and to come to a fair decision without undue political influence. Florence Johnson, Christopher Jacobs and Catherine Collins have done so, and deserve to continue in their current roles,” the News editorial staff opines, apparently with a straight face.

Is it not interesting that their very own columnists have offered contrary opinions? Consider Rod Watson’s May 29, 2008 article that begins, “Despite the many things the Buffalo Board of Education is probing in the McKinley High School fiasco, one critical issue has yet to surface: What to do about board members who appear to lie to the public?”

Or Donn Esmonde, who wrote on April 16, 2008: “Put the pieces together, and you get a picture of what happens when a school system is run by the integrity-lite and the ethically challenged. They all will tell you that nothing matters more than the kids. Amazingly, their noses do not grow an inch when they say it.”

Watson summed it up also on July 3, 2008 in an article entitled: School Board lacks guts to do right thing. He begins: “Of all the reforms possible in the wake of the McKinley High School fiasco, the most obvious has yet to be mentioned: Students need a union. And lobbyists. And bigger allowances, so they can make campaign contributions to buy off legislators who write the laws that Buffalo school officials are hiding behind to avoid holding anyone accountable.”

“You can thank the unions and their grip on Albany’s legislative machine, as well as their intimidating ability to affect a School Board candidacy in elections with miniscule turnouts,” he continues.

Shall we also thank the editorial staff of his paper for their ability to try to do the very same thing?

Tuesday’s school board election will be decided by city voters. It should be decided by the parents of children who attend classes every day in the city of Buffalo, and by every city resident who recognizes the critical importance of improving the quality of education for the children of our impoverished city—where only 46% of students graduate from high school in four years—a number that has worsened over the past five years under the the questionable guidance of the incumbent at-large school board members, who now seek an additional five years to finish the job.

Their biggest success, they claim, is a $1 billion “state of the art” school renovation project that is so hopelessly out of touch with progressive green-building standards that the electrical bills to run the buildings will be an albatross around taxpayers’ necks long into the future.

The title of the Buffalo News editorial nails it on the head: Tuesday’s Buffalo school board vote will determine future of district.

Wouldn’t it be a surprising miracle if, when voters step into the booth this Tuesday, May 5, they remember the little voices of the children who deserve so much better, and forget the propaganda dumped upon them by business people from Niagara Falls and the suburbs, who would have us believe that things are just fine in the Buffalo Schools?

Vote!

According to documents obtained by Artvoice today, Buffalo Students First has spent $30,036 to advance the campaigns of Buffalo school board incumbents Catherine Collins, Chris Jacobs, and Florence Johnson, as of April 30.

Buffalo Students First is described by Buffalo Niagara Partnership Director of Government Relations Glenn Aronow as “a coaltion of businesses, community organizations and stakeholders, and school choice advocates that support progressive reforms and policies in educating Buffalo school children.”

Among the beneficiaries of BSF’s expenditures is Unity Coalition, Inc. The group received $4,000 from BSF between March 5 and April 3. According to records filed with the Erie County Clerk’s Office in 1995, Unity Coalition, Inc., was formed “to promote political action and awareness, and to do any other act or thing incidental to or connected with the foregoing purposes or in advancement thereof.”

The unity coalition incorporation documents were signed by Arthur  O. Eve, Jr., who is currently in line for the position of Democratic Deputy Commissioner of Elections.

In other important school board election news, the Erie County Board of Elections has indicated that any voters who have already submitted absentee ballots for disqualified candidate Fred Yellen may still cast a vote for another candidate by doing so at their designated polling place on the day of the election. We are awaiting word from elections officials on how else any such absentee voters can change their vote, now that their candidate is out of the running.

Yellen was scratched from the list of candidates last Saturday, April 25, after an objection to his signature petitions was filed by Herbert Bellamy, Jr—notarized by Aronow.

The Buffalo school board election is Tuesday, May 5—now just four days away.

Click here to read the Show Cause Order filed today by attorney Peter A. Reese seeking to impel the release of financial information pertaining to the upcoming Buffalo school board election on May 5.

Five qualified voters are the petitioners seeking, among other things, the release of this public information. The respondents are superintendent James A. Williams, BPS clerk James M. Kane, school board members Christopher L. Jacobs, Catherine Collins, and Florence D. Johnson, the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, Buffalo Students First, and NYS Commissioner of Education Richard P. Mills.

The court date is set for Monday, May 4 at 11am. Hon. Frederick J. Marshall, J.S.C. presiding.

Additional relief sought includes, in the alternative, the filing of revised campaign statements by the incumbents, or an injunction against further participation in school board elections by the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and/or Buffalo Students First.

“Of interest, the section of the education law which allows the judge to order filing or revision of campaign statements contains a provision allowing the judge to grant immunity from criminal prosecution and thus compell testimony. Such a course of action would require further proceedings and take much more time than can be accommodated prior to the May 5 election,” Reese adds.

The petitioners’ primary objective on Monday will be to obtain a bench court order requiring the immediate release of all documents filed with clerk James M. Kane, pursuant to the conduct of the 2009 Buffalo school board election.

The Coalition for Economic Justice has put together an informative piece of literature for city voters, in preparation for the May 5 Buffalo School Board Election, one week from today.

Seven of the original nine candidates responded to questions that were posed by moderator Allison Duwe at the candidates forum sponsored by CEJ at the True Bethel Baptist Church on April 21.

Incumbent Florence Johnson did not attend the event, so there are no responses from her. Challenger Fred Yellen did attend, and provided thoughtful answers—however, he was scratched from the ballot on Saturday, April 25, after a successful signature petition challenge from Herbert Bellamy Jr. and Buffalo-Niagara Partnership Director of Government Relations Glenn Aronow.

Visit the Coalition for Economic Justice Web site to download the School Board Voter’s Guide, or simply click here.

Get educated about the candidates, and get out and vote on Tuesday, May 5.