A few months ago I wrote a post about a Job Fair sponsored by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown titled Job Fairs Are Great PR For Politicians But Ineffective Otherwise. The Buffalo News recently ran a follow-up article regarding the City of Buffalo Job Fair.

While Mayor Brown hyped the fact that 1,500 “good-paying” jobs were available at the job fair, attended by 1,900 people, the Buffalo News was able to confirm that 17 people found jobs through the fair. The City disputes the Buffalo News numbers and says that 26 people found work through the job fair.

Brown took office as Mayor proclaiming that he would track and measure the performance of government departments through his CitiStat program. When the Buffalo News pointed out that only 17 people obtained jobs, Brown’s response was “I don’t think the numbers means anything,”, noting that the event was just another effort, in many, to assist people who are looking for employment.”

In my opinion government officials need to focus their time and energy on providing essential city services such as sanitation, police, fire etc. There is very little impact that city officials can have in regard to jobs and economic development. The Buffalo News, HUD and State Comptrollers Office have time after time documented how poorly managed and ineffective city efforts have been to address poverty in Buffalo, the third poorest city in the nation.

Job fairs are ineffective but they are great PR for politicians.

www.reinventinggov.org

I’m not sure when the high water mark was regarding the public’s right to know about what’s being done in its name and with its tax dollars, but surely that time has passed.

A lot gets written this time every year as the press “celebrates” Sunshine Week. The focus is often on government’s failure to live up to the spirit, if not the letter of the Freedom of Information Law. But the problem goes well beyond efforts to stonewall the press and public under the FOI Law.

I’ve been a reporter for more than 30 years and over that time I’ve experienced an exponential growth by government to suppress, control and spin information to suit the political purposes.

This has been a bi-partisan effort that extends from Washington to Albany to the town halls and school boards throughout the land. That’s not to say everyone is up to no good. But after three decades in the front lines, I can say from first-hand experience there is too much skulduggery going on.

The federal government is notorious for taking its time fulfilling FOI requests. As Jerry Zremski of The Buffalo News noted in his fine piece Sunday, the Navy took a decade to respond to an FOI request from the paper.

Repeat – a decade.

There’s something far worse going on, however. Down right scary, in fact.

The feds have essentially acknowledged that they are using their surveillance powers to identify the confidential sources of reporters under select circumstances.  It started under George W. Bush, if not sooner, and continues under Barack Obama, who as a candidate for president pledged greater protection for whistle blowers but has instead gone after them with a vengeance since taking office.

Most of my experience has been at the state and local level, and while nothing going on in New York rises to the level of what we’re seeing out of Washington, the basic M.O. of control is very much at play.

There have been some steps forward. Campaign contribution and expenditures of local, as well as state candidates, are online, although they could be presented in a more user-friendly format. Likewise, the state Senate has started posting more information, including its payroll.

But the Senate, much like the rest of state government, is on a permanent spin cycle.

I did a series of stories and blog posts on the spending of the Legislature in 2008 and calculated that its press apparatus involved 194 employees and $10.8 million in spending. Most senators had a full-time press secretary, not that most of them do all that much newsworthy, especially in the seven or eight months a year when they’re not in session.

All this “help” wasn’t of much use to me when I tried to obtain public records a few years back on the amount of mail Sen. Antoine Thompson was sending to voters at taxpayer expense. It took me several FOI requests and well over six months – it could have been close to a year – before I obtained the information.

State government under the governor’s control – both departments and authorities – has its own set of issues. They all have press handlers – “public information officers” is a common title – and the good ones help reporters navigate what can be sprawling bureaucracies.

But I’ve learned over time that their first responsibility is to manage their department’s message, in part by keeping reporters from talking to rank-and-file staff. You know, the people who actually know something. But these staff people can’t necessarily be counted on to “stay on message.”

Instead, information requests and questions and answers all flow through the flak, who usually have no first-hand knowledge of which they speak.

Then there is local government.

I continue to be amazed at how many officials charged with running public meetings and handling FOI requests simply don’t know the applicable laws. Elected boards will often go into closed-door executive session citing grounds that misinterpret the law. And the lawyers and bureaucrats charged with handling requests for public records often don’t know the FOI Law.

Just how clueless is officialdom?

Recently, The News reported the difficulty many town councils and school boards were having meeting a new law to post more information online regarding matters before elected officials.

Reported Jay Tokasz:

The new law requires the posting of even more information — essentially, whatever the voting board members have at their disposal during the meetings, as long as it’s not confidential.  Some area boards have been scrambling to meet the requirements, while others acknowledged that they either were unaware of the change in the law or were still trying to understand what the amendment means.

The problem is endemic of the miserable job most, if not all, local governments are doing in using the web to make their operations transparent to constituents. Gov 2.0 is nowhere to be found in Western New York.

Then there is City Hall, where the Brown administration has taken obfuscation to a new low.

Here’s how it works.

Want to talk to the mayor? Good luck, unless you manage to catch him at a photo op.

Talk to staff? Surely, you jest.

Perhaps a department head? Probably not. They know speaking out of turn will incur the wrath of Deputy Mayor Steve Casey, if not Brown himself.  Instead, media inquiries are usually funneled to the mayor’s press secretary.

Ah, finally someone charged to deal with the press. But it can be tough sometimes to get even them to talk, so reporters are forced to ask for public records to fill in the gaps.

But asking for a public records means often getting told to file a FOI request, which can takes days, weeks or months to produce results.

The routine goes something like this. The administration, through its legal department, will wait the full five business days permitted under law to recognize the FOI request in writing. It will then often say it needs at least 20 more working days to determine if the records are available. The 20 days comes and goes and they’ll often send another letter saying they need at least another 20 days. And so it goes.

On occasion, it takes a fair amount of time to locate and produce records. Then again, I’ve waited a month or two to simply obtain a resume of a department head.

The rest of City Hall doesn’t work this way. Let me give you a current example.

I filed a FOI request about a month ago seeking documents related to recycling. The City Clerk’s office, controlled by the Common Council, got back to me in less than two weeks to say they searched their files and didn’t have the records. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to hear back from the Corporation Counsel regarding records kept by the Public Works Department, both of which are under the control of the administration. Their initial five days has long passed, and most of their 20 have elapsed, as well. I’m expecting a letter any day now saying “We need more time.”

While I can’t agree with the tactic, I can kind of understand when it’s me or another  investigative reporter with a history of uncovering wrongdoing. But the Brown administration routinely does this to other reporters. Aaron Besecker succeeded Brian Meyer as The News’ City Hall reporter last fall and I can’t help but notice the number of times he’s reported the Brown administration didn’t respond to questions or requests for information.

Any kind of public relations pro would advise a client such as Byron Brown to not dump on a new reporter on the beat. But to Brown and Company, it’s shoot now and dodge questions later. It’s a way of doing business, regardless of the letter or spirit of applicable laws.

But, again, City Hall is far from the only culprit. I recently filed an information request with the Unified Court System seeking a database of Buffalo Housing Court cases. The records were provided twice before. This time, I’m getting resistance.

But that was then, and this is now, when the public’s right to know, in the courts and elsewhere, is falling victim to the culture of spin, control and suppression.

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While the cruelty of this attack is a little out of the ordinary, problems in Shoshone Park are nothing new.  The park has been a known problem area for quite a while now.  Anti-crime cameras were supposed to be installed, but that never happened (big surprise there, right?).  And I can’t even remember the last time I saw police actually in the park, patrolling.

All this leaves neighbors asking …whether Mayor Byron Brown and City Councilwoman Bonnie Russell have any sort of plan to stabilize what’s left our still somewhat viable neighborhoods, or is grassroots just making it up as they go along?

From the photo of Shoshone Park below, you can see that Bonnie Russell works just as hard on poor conditions in the parks as she does in the rest of her district.  Those of you lucky enough to actually get her on the phone are probably familiar with the whiney answer that we are just not used to all this violence.  So her answer is what, get used to it?

AnswerLady

The combination of thin ice and a loose dog had fatal consequences in the Falls Wednesday. A 70-year-old man fell through the ice while chasing one of his canines onto Hyde Park Lake. Rescue workers responded quickly, but the man was later pronounced dead at Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital.

Another SPCA in the region is facing scrutiny. State Police raided the Wyoming County SPCA in Attica on Wednesday after reports of feline overcrowding and poor conditions. A satellite facility in the Eastern Hills Mall is also under investigation.

The Buffalo Sabres are among parties interested in developing the Webster Block site near First Niagara Center. Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown announced Wednesday night that the city would release a request for proposals regarding the two-acre parcel within the next two weeks.

Mayor Brown is challenging companies based in the city to employ additional Buffalo residents. The mayor’s “Hire Buffalo” initiative asks each company to hire at least one more city resident this year, in an attempt to lower the urban unemployment rate.

Related articles

• Daredevil to make impact on economy (wivb.com)
• City of Buffalo to Sell Webster Block (wkbw.com)

Very few town board or city councils actually set goals or involve the community in goal setting and reviewing the accomplishment of goals. Bay City Michigan (population 35,000), does all of the above. As reported in the Bay City News , the City Commission invited the public to participate in a Saturday meeting to set goals for the City Manager. A few months ago the City Manager in a public session and in a private session with city officials explained how he met last year’s goals. Input is being sought from city residents to prioritize a list of goals for 2012.

In contrast every year the Mayor of Buffalo holds a state of the city address where without any discussion with city councilmembers or community members the Mayor proposes his goals and initiatives for the year. As the Buffalo News reports, the Mayor’s success in achieving the yearly goals he puts out are mixed. ”The Buffalo News asked the Brown administration last week for more information about four projects and initiatives announced in prior State of the City addresses. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to The News’ inquiries for information.”

When the Buffalo Common Council President was asked about the four initiatives according to the Buffalo News “He said he wasn’t familiar enough with them to provide more information.” Councilmember David Rivera stated “If the information about previous projects is difficult for a reporter to obtain, imagine what the public gets.”Rivera said it’s important to have checks and balances in government so that such information can be tracked and disclosed.”I’d imagine if they did what they said they were going to do,” Rivera said, “they’d have press conferences.”

The process utilized in Buffalo does not sufficiently engage fellow elected officials and community members in setting goals for the City. The communication necessary to get people on board and committed to making things happen simply does not take place. The end result is that not a lot gets done other than the initial splash of press coverage.

The approach utilized in Bay City takes time, but in the end it is a better approach to setting government goals and monitoring their accomplishment. There is never a meeting in Buffalo where elected officials review stated goals and discuss whether they have been achieved or not. Elected officials don’t like to be held accountable and Buffalo’s dysfunctional way of operating ensures that little gets accomplished without anyone being held responsible.

For many years Mayors and City Councilmembers in Buffalo have utilized a flawed approach in setting goals and the lack of real results in a City, which is the third poorest in the Nation speaks volumes. Instead of doing the same process year after year, maybe some future Mayor or City Council will try a different way?

www.paulwolfideas.com

New rules for food trucks are now the law in the city of Buffalo. Mayor Byron Brown signed legislation Monday that dictates where the rolling restaurants can operate. Food trucks must stay 100 feet away from existing restaurants and licensed hot-dog vendors. The new law goes into effect after months of squabbling between food-truck owners and brick-and-mortar establishments.

A veterinarian hired by the Niagara SPCA to oversee animal care in the wake of the agency’s euthanasia scandal will not take his post after all. Former colleagues of Dr. Grant Hobika as well as animal owners had filed complaints against him regarding mistreatment of animals. The doctor has denied the charges.

Still more investigation of the mysterious syndrome affecting LeRoy students. The school district has hired a firm to conduct environmental testing at the site of the junior-senior high. Meanwhile, five of 18 afflicted students underwent MRI testing at Dent Neurological Institute, where doctors believe that the patients’ Tourette’s-like symptoms have a psychological basis.

A pair of historic Protestant churches in Buffalo may be consolidating. First Presbyterian on Symphony Circle might shutter its church on Symphony Circle, in favor of sharing facilities and staff at Trinity Episcopal on Delaware Avenue. A letter was recently shared with the Trinity congregation explaining the proposal. Both churches have seen declines in membership.

Just as Sabre players finally seem to be recovering from a season-long injury bug, now their coach is hurt. Defenseman Jordan Leopold collided with Lindy Ruff at practice Monday. Ruff was flipped to the ice, suffering three broken ribs. The head coach was taken to the hospital for x-rays. His status remains uncertain for the Sabres’ next game Wednesday night.

Related articles

• Common Council approves food trucks (buffalo.ynn.com)
• Report: Lindy Ruff Injured At Practice (buffalosportsdaily.com)

It could be the final day of talks between Occupy Buffalo and city government. Representatives of both sides will meet Wednesday afternoon after failing to reach agreement Tuesday night. Tents remain in Niagara Square at least through today, with Mayor Byron Brown expressing optimism that an arrangement can be extended.

Two area men have been indicted in the murder of a Cheektowaga native last November. Rockie Jones III and Edwin McCloud are accused of shooting Arnold Law to death after entering his home in an armed robbery. Both face 25 years to life if convicted.

Stevie Johnson of the Buffalo Bills reached out with a pair of Super Bowl tickets for a Clarence Center teen who lost his father. Mark Johnson, a quarterback at Clarence High School, received a call from Johnson after the receiver saw an outpouring of Twitter posts following the death of Mark’s dad over the weekend. Mark is taking his brother to the big game, and expects to visit with Stevie there.

Related articles

• City may ask Occupiers to move (wivb.com)
• Occupy deadline approaches (buffalo.ynn.com)
• Falls Residents Speak Out at NFTA Public Hearing (wkbw.com)
• Second hearing on transit cuts (buffalo.ynn.com)

A week of public meetings will precede the NFTA‘s decision-making on how to close a 15-million dollar budget deficit. Hearings will be held Tuesday in Niagara Falls, and Wednesday and Thursday in Buffalo, for riders and other stakeholders to speak out on possible route cuts, fare hikes, or both.

The future of the Occupy Buffalo movement is uncertain as the group’s agreement with the city is set to expire February 1. Activists have camped in Niagara Square since October, but their number appears to be dwindling. Mayor Byron Brown says the city’s corporation counsel is considering options after the group’s Monday night meeting.

Supporters of the Niagara Falls Air Base are headed to the Pentagon this week in the wake of announced Defense Department cuts. Merrell Lane of the Niagara Military Affairs Council says she will meet with Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz to discuss plans for the base.

SPCA Niagara Executive Director John Faso has been fired in the wake of last week’s report that severely criticized several aspects of his operation. Faso, who was hired in 2010, was released after a Monday meeting of the SPCA board. An investigation by the Erie County SPCA cited improper euthanasia as the most serious charge against the facility. Faso told Channel 2 News that he was hired to improve the SPCA’s financial standingn, and that he had succeeded in that mission.

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is pushing hard for an increase in New York’s minimum wage. The speaker introduced a bill that would raise the hourly amount from $7.25 to $8.50 next January. Future increases would then be tied to the rate of inflation. Opponents say the measure would stunt job growth.

A boarded-up house on Buffalo’s West Side happens to be owned by a city building inspector. The Vermont Street property belongs to Joseph LaTona, who has served in the city’s Buildings department since 1990 . It is about to go into foreclosure.

It appears that Professional Women’s Soccer champions the Western New York Flash will not be able to defend their title next year. Five team owners are engaged in a legal battle with a sixth, and as a result the league will cancel its 2012 season. CEO Jennifer O’Sullivan hopes the circuit will be able to resume play in 2013.

Related articles

• Niagara SPCA Executive Director Terminated (buffalo.ynn.com)
• Occupy deadline approaches (buffalo.ynn.com)
• Meeting on NFTA changes (buffalo.ynn.com)

Mayor Brown will address the students briefly to congratulate them and encourage them to continue to be vigilant in their education.

EVENT:                 Mayor Brown to honor the newly inducted students of the National Junior Honor Society.  Over 50 students, and their proud parents, have proven they are serious about their education by obtaining a 90 average or above.

DATE:                    Tuesday, January 10, 2012

TIME:                    10 AM

WHERE:                Lovejoy Discovery, School #43

  161 Benzinger Street

Mixed with love (so the world tastes good!)

Let it "B"

"This is the bill that will convert the state hospital for the insane into the Andrew Cuomo Memorial Gambling Casino for the Insane" Harrumph!