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?

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…)

I don’t know why I take local politics so seriously, when I’d be better off doing analysis First Amendment Club style (from today’s Buffalo Rocket):

Marc Panepinto discusses the Kavanaugh matter with Michael LoCurto as Judy Einach, Sean Ryan and Jonathan Rivera “Listen and Learn!”

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli!

(The Godfather of Primary Seasons!)

This year, the Democratic Party was going about its family business when its capo, Sam Hoyt, decided to stop on Elmwood Avenue for some fruit.  While there, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a couple of political operatives making a run at him. An ambush had been planned and they opened up on him with everything they had.

His close ally, Barbra (Fredo) Kavanaugh, had failed to protect him and by doing so endangered the entire neighborhood; leaving it vulnerable to Lord Byron Barzini.

Lord Byron had secretly struck up an alliance with Steve (the pigeon) Sollozzo, sometimes known as the Turk. The operatives failed and Marc Hagen-Panepinto, Sam’s consigliere, could be heard yelling; “They shot him 5 times and he’s still alive!”

Byron Barzini now gets a funny feeling every time he walks up the stairs to City Hall. “Who is the hunted one now?” he keeps muttering.

Sam’s second in command, Jeremy (Sonny) Toth, was furious. He now wants to take out the entire other side. It’s nothing personal he says; it’s just business.

Santino Toth now had to travel back and forth across the Grand Island bridges. He had counseled Sam to have the toll booths removed. He hated getting stuck in the toll booth traffic stating; ‘these booths tie up traffic and concentrate pollution, what I need is some ventilation.”

Shortly after, Sam recovered and blogger Joe Illuzzi went missing. Coincidentally Byron Barzini asked why he received two dead fish wrapped up in a newspaper article by Bob McCarthy.Steve Lucabrasi-Casey is actively trying to find out what the family plans now that Steve The Pigeon failed at taking out the godfather. Some say he plans to stop in at The First Amendment Club; he was told that they have some great pre-war Scotch.

It’s nice to see everyone getting along so well after these latest battles. Michael Corleone-LoCurto plans to invite Steve The Pigeon and Captain Joe Golombek-McCluskey to Santasiero’s Restaurant. It’s kind of old fashion there. If Mike remembers correctly; they used to have a pull chain toilet…

How does it end?

It ends, as it always ends; with a reading of “the Mighty Casey striking out!” at the club, while eating the Cannolies, drinking the wine and telling the mumaluca jokes!

Sammy Bacala said that it is so great at the Club; that he’ll send two free fish to who ever doesn’t agree.

* * * * * * *

Five Years before the West Side Times was founded in 1893,
the results were best quoted in the San Francisco Examiner –
June 3, 1888 by Ernest Lawrence Thayer:

“Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.”

Tuesday I ran down to City Hall to catch the 5:30pm public hearing on Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed 2008-2009 budget. This is not a particularly popular pastime, I know; usually only a half dozen or so of the “public” attend and address the Common Council, department heads, etc. to make known their concerns about the city’s spending habits.

I arrived at 5:40 and found every door to City Hall locked. Seriously. This sucks, I thought. Then: But at least its’s fodder for a column.

So I hung around, peering in the door, ringing the bell that surely does not work, waiting for someone to leave. At about 5:45pm I was joined by a news crew from Channel 4. We tried calling people we knew inside, but everyone was gone for the day — or in Council Chambers, attending the “public” hearing that the public was unable to attend, because all the doors were locked.

At about 5:50pm, Inspections, Permits and Economic Development Commissioner Rich Tobe exited the building but let the door close behind him before I could shout out to hold it open. “Sorry, I can’t get back in now,” he said. I told him I was trying to attend a public hearing up in Council Chambers. He agreed that locking the doors on the evening of such a hearing was curious. But not, he thought, unusual.

Nor did Deputy Mayor Steve Casey seem to consider it strange that the doors were locked, as the Channel 4 team and I raced to the elevators at 6pm, when we finally slipped in the door behind an exiting bureaucrat. “Hurry up,” he said, “it’s just about over.”

Right he was: In the absence of any “public” in the public hearing, the Council had rolled two hearings into one and wrapped the whole thing up by 6:10pm. Exactly one person had signed up to speak. Everyone in Council Chambers was on the public payroll.

Afterward, Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto summed up the hearing for me: a whole lot of nothing. He too was unsurprised to learn the doors had been locked. They had been locked during the previous day’s public hearing as well, he said.