Got this press release today from the Common Council, concerning a resolution demanding more transparency from the city’s semi-autonomous agencies and boards:

Council Members Kearns and LoCurto and their co-sponsors, Council Members Rivera, Fontana, and Franczyk, are introducing two resolutions for consideration by the Full Common Council, that would increase the transparency of operations of all City Boards, Agencies and Authorities codified in the City of Buffalo Charter and Code as well as any Not-for-Profit organization receiving city taxpayer dollars.

These resolutions would impose new requirements on entities, many of which yield considerable power and have been criticized and referred to as “shadow governments”, to provide city officials and taxpayers with the opportunity to gain greater insight into their operations.

In the first resolution, the governing bodies all City Boards, Agencies and Authorities, are being called upon to hold their meetings in Council Chambers and utilize existing recording equipment and allow for meetings playback on the City’s CATV government channel, for viewing by individuals who are unable to attend such meetings.  This would also enable meetings to be held in a geographically centralized, uniform location that is well serviced by public transportation and which nearly all Buffalonian’s are familiar with.

The second Resolution directs the Acting Corporation Counsel to prepare a Local Law requiring that all Not-for-Profit organizations that contract with the City and receive taxpayer dollars to file on an on-going basis with the City Clerk, their meeting schedules, by-laws/rules of operation, the composition and membership of their governing boards, approved minutes of meetings, and any report, study, review and audit, financial or otherwise, prepared by, performed on or for, the respective organization.

Good idea.

This morning I was sifting through the BERC, BURA, and BNRC financial documents released by the Brown administration to the Common Council last week under threat of Council subpoena, as I expect to be doing for several days, when it occurred to me: I ought to post them online, so that anyone else who wants to pore over hundreds of pages of loan information and salaries and audits can do so at their leisure. Maybe offer me some pointers.

All of these documents were requested at the beginning of February by Council as part of a review of the Brown administration’s community development block grant plan for 2009. The Council was stonewalled by the Brown administration, until two weeks ago, when the Council voted 8-1 to threaten to subpoena the requested documents if the administration would not fork them over. (That resoultion brought ecumenism to a contentious Council. Only Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis voted against it.) The Brown administration relented, and the Council received the documents last Wednesday.

Artvoice got them on Monday. Here they are:

Who at BERC and BURA gets cell phones.

BERC loans that have been written off since 2000.

Property BERC owns.

BERC salaries, 2006-2009.

A 2007 audit of BERC.

BNRC financial statements for 2006 and 2007.

Some info on BNRC loans.

Land owned by BURA.

BURA loan information.

More BURA loan information.

BURA salaries.

I hope to have made something of these reports in a few days. If anyone out there wants to help, I’m all ears.

This week I wrote about Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto’s fruitless efforts to obtain financial information from three of the city’s alphabet soup agencies:  BERC, BURA, and BNRC. For more than a month, he’s been seeking the following information:

■ a list of all outstanding loans, including borrower names, dates, and amounts loaned, amounts owed, and whether loans are current or in arrears;

■ a list of all loans that have been written off, as well as a list of collateral used to secure the loan and its disposition;

■ a list of all properties the agencies own;

■ a list by name of all the agencies’ officers, directors, and employees, along with their job titles and salaries for the last three years;

■ a list by name of all those possessing cell phones, Blackberries, beepers, etc., paid for by the agencies, along with providers and cost for the past year;

■ a copy of any audits or reviews of the three agencies, whether by private firms or government agencies.

He’s received nothing, and now the Council is threatening to subpoena the information.

In the article I forgot to mention this great irony: LoCurto is on the board of BURA.

BURA won’t provide basic information to its own board members?