Today Glenn Gramigna posted an account of a conversation with Pastor Darius Pridgen, in which Pridgen diagnoses the dysfunction of City Hall. Pridgen says:

If you look at the City Charter, the Mayor is supposed to be the one who lays out a vision for what Buffalo should be and then the Common Council provides checks and balances. But, we haven’t had that in recent years. We’ve had 10 Mayors, one real Mayor and nine little Mayors. And, I really think that this is part of what has been holding us back.

He’s wrong about that: While Buffalo does have strong mayor system—one in which the chief executive prepares and implements the city’s budget and has broad discretion to hire and fire department heads—there is nothing in the charter that isolates “vision” to the executive branch or which relegates the Common Council to providing “checks and balances.” Pridgen should know this: He served for a spell on the city’s charter revision commission 10 year ago, before resigning. (In part, according to fellow commissioner George Arthur, Pridgen resigned because Mayor Tony Masiello would not endorse his successful run for a seat on Buffalo’s school board. A seat from which Pridgen also resigned.)

In fact, the Common Council is invested with immense powers (including approving the mayor’s hires and budget), and is capable of setting a citywide agenda. That’s more difficult since the downsizing referendum of 2002 stripped the Council of its three citywide-elected at-large members and president, but it’s still possible. The powers invested in the Council by the city charter make it possible. Their failure to do so is the consequence of political division on between councilmembers and between the Council and the mayor’s office.

In a hypothetical world in which the Council tried to legislate into policy and budget priorities its own “vision for what Buffalo should be,” of course, it would rely on the mayor to implement that legislation. That’s the mayor’s job (“to enforce the laws therein”), but our strong mayor has the ability, like many chief executives, to subvert the will of the legislature by choosing not to execute its orders. A strong, independently elected mayor has the political cover to do so, too: Byron Brown, for example, was re-elected handily and so can claim that his policies have been approved by the majority of the city. If this Common Council, controlled by a majority that often stands in opposition to the mayor on the perhaps five percent of issues before them where there’s room for debate, decided to assert its will on one of those issues, the mayor could make a good argument for ignoring their actions.

I tend, perhaps irrationally, to believe that legislative bodies—despite their frequent chaos, horsetrading, parochialism, posturing—ought to be more powerful than the executive branch. They tend to be closer to the people they represent, and the need to build consensus protects the governed, I think, from both tyranny and truly boneheaded ideas.

That’s why I went to last night’s meeting of the Frontier Democrats at J.P. Bullfeather’s, to hear North District Councilman talk about one of his favorite ideas: Golombek believes the city should turn to a city manager form of government. In his “vision for what Buffalo should be,” the Common Council would hire an independent city manager certified by the International City/County Management Association. The city manager would run the day-to-day operations of the city: budgeting, hiring, firing, performance analysis and optimization, etc. A citywide-elected mayor would fill a largely ceremonial role. The citywide-elected city comptroller would continue to monitor government spending and procedures. And the Common Council would set the agenda.

The idea is to isolate personnel practices and the execution of city services from the vagaries of political wrangling. Police are deployed where they are needed most, not preferentially to districts that produce high voter turnouts. Capital expenditures are directed where they’re need, according to a master plan, not as political favors to friendly legislators and contractors. It may seem a radical idea, but it’s not: Nearly half of US municipalities larger than 2,500 people use some form of city manager/council government.

Golombek admits the idea is not popular in political circles—certainly not with his friend the mayor. “Opposition clear across the board,” Golombek says. “People are opposed to this, and I believe it’s because people lose power”—the power to give jobs, to direct contracts, to subvert good governance to political considerations. If so many in our dysfunctional City Hall are opposed to the idea, it must bear examining.

In other, unrelated-to-David-Archuleta news:

• North District Councilmember Joe Golombek will open a discussion next week on whether Buffalo might benefit from a city manager form of government. In that form, a (0ne hopes) professional city manager is hired by the legislative branch, and the office of mayor becomes largely ceremonial rather than adminstrative. The notion is that the political acumen that’s required to be elected mayor of a big city does not necessarily guarantee the adminsitrative experience and skills required to run it. Golombek has invited Darnell Earley, city manager for Saginaw, Michigan and president of the International City/County Management Association, to speak at next Tuesday’s meeting of the Buffalo Common Council’s Legislation Committee at 2pm.  At 7pm, Early will speak in the auditorium of the Buffalo Historical Society.
• I’m no fan of Erie County Executive Chris Collins, but I think he got a bum rap on the Volland Electric contract. And I admire his response: He has instructed all the companies in which he has a stake to refrain from bidding on county work.
• Battaglia Trucking and Demolition, down on Seneca Street, has applied for a modification of its solid waste managememnt permit from the New York State Department of Environmental. The modification would raise Battaglia’s capacity from 3,800 tons of waste per month to 1,600 tons per day. Battaglia also wants a new, 13,000-square-foot building and increased operating hours. A letter from DEC to Mayor Byron Brown, asking the administration to help determine who the lead agency in the environmental analysis of the request ought to be, was filed with the Common Council today. Expect the Seneca-Babcock neighborhood to, um, react. More on this and other South Buffalo waste yards later in week.

Some items, possibly true and possibly not, to consider:

—Is North District Councilmember Joe Golombek considering a run for City Comptroller? If so, how does Andy SanFilippo feel about that? Both enjoy cozy relations with Mayor Byron Brown. Who would win the mayor’s support?

—I called to ask Joe, but turns out the phones in City Hall are down today. Raj Mehta, the city’s IT chief, has been overseeing the installation of a new digital VOIP phone system in City Hall. (You can learn more about it by watching Mehta’s last round with the CitiStat panel.) He says that Verizon switched off the Common Council’s old lines on Friday at 4pm instead of today at 4pm. (I emailed Joe, as well, and will relay his answer when it comes.)

—I’ve been told that the continuing battle between the mayor and the Common Council over the 2009 capital budget originated with a $200,000 streets project for the intersection of Linwood and North—a project in the Niagara District, represented by David Rivera, who beat out mayoral advisor Peter Savage for that seat. The mayor left that project out of his original capital budget; the Common Council added the project in its version, which divided infrastructure improvement funds equally among councilmanic districts instead of leaving all the spending at the mayor’s discretion. (The five-member majority coalition argued that the mayor has used the capital funds to reward and punish councilmembers over the past three years.) When the mayor vetoed the Council’s revisions, he retained funding for the Linwood-North project, admitting it was necessary, while stripping infrastructure improvement funds from the districts represented by the councilmembers who voted to revise his original budget.

—Finally, I’ve heard that a member of the Buffalo Police Department’s Mobile Response Unit has been detailed to perform a bomb search at HSBC Arena before each home Sabres game. Problem is, there’s no such duty. The BPD doesn’t do bomb searches at HSBC Arena before each home Sabres game. So what is that officer being paid to do?

UPDATE: Joe Golombek says he, too, has heard the tumor that he’s running for comptroller, but at this point he’s happy to be North Dostrict Councilmember. He says, “There are several issues that I would like to work on, including:  new and improved special police, crime stats on the internet, artist studios at the BRAC (Buffalo Religious Arts Center) which is the former St. Francis Xavier, a Main Street Project for Tonawanda Street, City Manager form of government and non-partisan elections for the City of Buffalo among others.”

As anyone who’d bother to read this post knows, South District Councilmember Mickey Kearns and Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto submitted a resolution asking the city’s law department to draft a statute banning some city employees from engaging in politicking. The resolution, they say, is a response to complaints that workers in City Hall are made to carry petitions, donate to campaigns, and canvass for candidates whom the mayor instructs them to support. (I’m having trouble downloading the text, so no link, sorry.) This mini Hatch Act—so called because it is a local version of the federal law—is intended, say Kearns and LoCurto, to protect city employees from being pressured by their superiors to do political work.

Niagara District Councilmember David Rivera and Council President Dave Franczyk signed onto the resolution, and the fifth man in the majority coalition, Lovejoy’s Rich Fontana, voted yea to send the resolution to the legislative committee.

That’s where it ran into attorney Peter Reese, who excoriated the measure for 10 or 15 excruciatingly funny minutes. (I don’t watch City Hall TV myself, or whatever it’s called, because I don’t have cable; if you do, and if such things interest you, try to catch Reese’s performance.)

Reese said the proposed legislation did not represent reform at all, that in fact it was “politics as usual.” He called the proposed legislation anti-union, because as written it could make union activity grounds for dismissal.

Edit: Mike LoCurto tells me I have misunderstood the section of the proposed legislation that led me to write what is now in brackets and italics below: “The exemption would only be for employees who are currently committeemembers,” LoCurto write. “They could remain committeemenmbers for their current two-year term. They would not be permitted to donate to campaigns during that time.”

[He said it was racist, for several reasons, not least of which is this: Current employees would be grandfathered, so they could still politick. Only new employees would be excluded from political activity. If you sort city employees by councilmanic district and race, you'll find a preponderance of white South Buffalonians. New Latino hires from the Lower West Side? You can't campaign for a candidate from your community. New African-American hires from Cold Springs? You don't get to pass petitions for you next door neighbor whose running for Common Council.

White guy from South Buffalo who has had a job since the Griffin administration and never fails to drop $50 into the hat at a Goin' South beer bash? Keep writing those checks.]

(Later in the hearing, North District Councilmember Joe Golombek pointed out that a ban on City Hall employees politicking would deprive the mayor of some of his ground troops in his re-election bid next year; meantime, county and local state employees, who tend to align with the county chairman, would remain free to campaign for the mayor’s opponent.)

Reese said the legislation had been misnamed: Instead of the “City of Buffalo Employee Protection Act,” it ought to be called the “Minority Exclusion Act of 2008.”

Worst of all, he said, it created a “political superclass.” Only folks like plow drivers, clerks, cashiers, sanitation workers, etc. would be prohibited from politicking. Appointees who serve at the pleasure of the mayor, the comptroller, or the council—immediate staff of the three branches of city government, in other words, the people who are closest to politicians and most overtly political to begin with—would not be covered by this mini Hatch Act.

It compromises First Amendment rights, Reese said. And state courts have already ruled that passing designating petitions for a political candidate is an absolute right of every citizen.

“And these are the things I like about this bill,” Reese said.

(more…)

It’s been seven business days since I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the City of Buffalo for all financial records related to the Mayor’s Impact Team since January 1, 2006. In that time…

• the chief of the Mayor’s Impact Team, the venerable political hack Bill Buyers, was caught by cameramen from Channel 7 with two of his crew working on his own home on city time, using city equipment (Day 1);
• Mayor Byron Brown suspended Buyers for 15 days without pay and his two crewmembers for five days without pay (Day 1);
• Assistant Corporation Counsel Cavette Chambers acknowledged receipt of my email FOIL request and promised to answer in 10 business days (Day 2);
• Councilmembers LoCurto, Kearns, and Fontana filed a resolution requesting that City Comptroller Andy Sanfilippo audit the Mayor’s Impact Team (Day 2);
• the Office of the Comptroller announced its intention to pursue an audit (Day 3).

Today, I asked Chambers et alia to shorten the timeline for fulfilling my request, arguing that the Comptroller’s intention to perform an audit suggests that the material I requested is being compiled for that purpose. I told Chambers that I expected to receive the requested information at the same time, if not before, the City Comptroller receives it. After all, I asked first, and the law requires that public records demanded under FOIL be furnished as quickly as possible.

Meantime, on Saturday morning I stopped by the Amherst Street VFW post where Buyers hosts a monthly breakfast, to see who would show up to support him (and, I guess to eat for free). There were maybe 50 or so cars in the parking lot, and Buyers stood by the back entrance glad-handing folks as they arrived.

I stayed long enough to see North District Councilmember Joe Golombek arrive.