Reilly: One Fewer Hat

Brian Reilly resigned today as head of the Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp. But don’t worry, he isn’t leaving town, because this is just one of the many hats he wears, as confirmed by Byron Brown.

Courtesy Buffalo News

I don’t know Brian Reilly. Hell – most citizens of Buffalo couldn’t pick him out of a line up, or tell you what job he really does. To me, the issue isn’t $9000 in free healthcare to a live in girlfriend. Come on – this faux hand-wringing over wasting even one dime of community development block grants has got to end. Buffalo is full of too much small-town thinking – let’s not keep proving it by being penny wise and pound foolish. We’re better than this.

No, the issue is the twirling moral compass of the Brown Administration. We all know by now the two main attributes of the Brown Administration:

1) Constant showboating and grandstanding, with daily news conferences about such things as a new store opening (see small town thinking above).

2) Producing subcommittees to call for a study to write a plan. See the three year effort to write the City Poverty Plan.

The guess now we need to officially add to add a third: damage control for fiscal mismanagement, conflict of interest, and waste of the taxpayer’s money. Why is it that the Brown Administration can’t do the right thing on its own, but requires a Buffalo News story to fess up. Circumventing grant rules and de facto running a restaurant into the ground, with the taxpayers holding the bill? Check. Trying to ram a miserable hotel into one of the best development spots on the water, so an influential ex-pol can get paid? Check. And now getting a sweetheart perk from an organization you happen to run, but that has no accountability or oversight? Check again.

If we aren’t careful, we’re going to have to add a fourth item: the inability to hire a competent economic development team. Brian Reilly sure seemed like a nice guy, who knew what he was doing. But his fingers are all over the One Sunset mess (do you really give a promotion to the person who breaks all the rules and is unqualified in the first place), and the waterfront hotel fiasco. Can you name me a success he orchestrated, in the world of economic development? And what ever happened to that urban planner we wooed from Seattle. . . .