CONTROLLER BROWN DISINGENUOUS ABOUT CITY FINANCIAL CALAMITIES

In case anyone was wondering who has been calling the fiscal shots for the past 51 months of the Dyster administration, City Controller Maria Brown removed any doubt that it's been anyone but her in an April 10, 2012, Niagara Gazette article, written by Mark Scheer, titled "Falls jobs paid for with casino cash may be in jeopardy."

The controller flexed her muscles in the lead paragraph of the story, "City Controller Maria Brown believes it's time to consider laying off a group of city employees whose salaries are tied to casino cash."

Her remarks clearly caught Mayor Paul Dyster by surprise, and he spent part of April 10 explaining to Channel 2 Television News reporters that there was no need to dismiss those city employees.

He did not, however, dare to castigate Mrs. Brown for her loose lips and her decidedly non-team behavior.

If Mrs. Brown's strident call for the elimination of city jobs were to be followed, it would bring the city's economic development efforts to a sudden halt by abolishing that department.

Many City Hall observers have remarked to the Reporter as to how Mrs. Brown seems to have anointed herself as mayor. And our readers have commented further as to how she has exposed her ample hypocrisy.

If it is true that Mayor Dyster has robbed the bank, then it's fair to say the city controller has driven the getaway car.

It was rather amusing to watch the April 2 Council meeting as Mrs. Brown attempted to school newly elected City Council member Glenn Choolokian as to how the city's financial problems called for cuts to worker pensions, reduction in health benefits and increased taxes, with the elimination of city services through layoffs.

Mr. Choolokian, coming humbly, but proudly, from a hardworking background, begged to differ with Mrs. Brown. He informed her how the world works and how the workingmen and women work in that world.

Councilman Choolokian was not going to allow anyone to drop the spending evils of the Dyster administration at the feet of the city employees.

For Mayor Dyster's controller to lecture anyone about the ins and outs of irresponsible spending is laughable, when you consider that the controller has presided over a veritable orgy of wasteful spending.

A few items with which to prove the point:

• The change orders on the $30 million courthouse brought the final bill to nearly $50 million. Where did that $20 million go?
• The $44 million train station has a minimum $3 million budget hole that was to be filled with casino dollars that are not coming in.
• City Planner Tom DeSantis and Mayor Dyster recently launched a $265,000 "citywide parks study" that's destined for a high and unused and dusty shelf at City Hall.
• The Desman Company parking study rolled in at a minimum $40,000 last month and has already been shelved. That "study" (the fruit of the city's parking committee, of which Mrs. Brown is a member) recommended spending a million dollars and hiring two city employees to open a city parking department. That department, conveniently enough, was to be monitored in perpetuity by Desman Associates.
• Excessive and scandalous overtime for favored employees such as Dennis Virtuoso and Brown's own assistant, Sandy Peploe.
• LiRo Engineering -- supporters of Dyster -- nailed a consulting fee for the duration of the courthouse construction at $14,600 per month (Dyster mysteriously fired the city engineer just before starting the biggest city construction project in the city in decades, then hired LiRo to monitor).
  LiRo landed yet more work: an open-ended contract for $50,000; another $50,000 to design faulty basketball courts; up to $200,000 to study and design storefronts on Old Falls Street (another plan that was shelved); $14,000 to study how to repair a fire hall roof.
• At LaSalle Waterfront Park, a routine soil analysis was botched and it cost taxpayers $100,000 that Tom DeSantis' friends, Wendel Engineers, then scooped up.
• Holiday Market came out of Ellicottville and hit the ground running at a cost of $225,000.
• The mayor's street, Orchard Parkway, was declared historic by his consultant friend Clinton Brown for $14,000.
• The legendary Pothole Killer -- in the face of a spending freeze -- was unfrozen for a minimum $70,000.
• The Underground Railroad Interpretive Center has $350,000 of casino funds tied up, and in spite of our FOIL request, the city won't tell us where it went.
• Mayor Dyster has hired an Albany law firm to monitor the city Police Department at a cost of $250 per hour.
• Corporation Counsel Craig Johnson has given legal consulting fees to Hodgson Russ in an amount that had exceeded $150,000 just months ago, instead of doing the work in-house.
  Indeed, it has become a joke at City Hall that every time the city is sued, another angel at Hodgson Russ earns his wings.
• And how about the "best and brightest" hiring program that wedded faceless Buffalo cash to taxpayer dollars, resulting in increased salaries for Mayor Dyster's top staff members?
  Why not roll those salaries back to what other cities pay for like jobs and save some money?
  City administrator is $110,000; was $62,000.
  City attorney, $97,000; was $65,000.
  City controller, $85,000; was $71,000.
  Code Enforcement director, $95,000; was $62,000.
  DPW director, $71,000; was $57,000.
  Ruby Pulliam, $85,000; was $60,000.
  City engineer $97,000 was $67,000.
  And Police Chief Chella's on line to make over $120,000, up from a base of $82,000.

If the controller has seen fit to call for the dismissal of six city employees, then why did she authorize, while a freeze was being considered, the Pothole Killer, the EEO/HR super department, hiring of a CD director at $70,000, an out-of-town trip for herself and her assistant -- to name but a few curious cost-cutting failures.

And why has the controller included the Holiday Market in the "casino spending plan" at a cost of $200,000 per year for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016?

No matter how you analyze the city's financial problems, the figures simply don't add up.

There's a disturbing disconnect between what is spent, what is planned, and how the deficit is defined.

But there may be more to this story.

Sources tell us that Mayor Dyster is living in fear that the county -- spelled Niagara County IDA Chief Henry "Mickey" Sloma and powerhouse New York State Sen. George Maziarz -- is trying to take over economic development in Niagara Falls.

In fact, Mr. Sloma recently pitched the City Council on the idea of the county and city working more closely together for mutual development benefit.

The mayor declined to swing at the pitch.

Mr. DeSantis was quoted in a news story as saying that Mr. Sloma "doesn't know what he's talking about," and City Planning Board Chairman Rick Smith said that Mr. Sloma was "full of baloney."

But is he?

While Mayor Dyster has boasted about his diplomatic skills -- skills allegedly honed in Geneva, Switzerland, across the table from the Soviets -- his skills don't appear to have rubbed off on his staff members.

If the Dyster economic development effort were to be abolished, as Mrs. Brown desires, it would be a clear dog whistle to the county that Mayor Dyster is incapable of funding the most modest of economic development efforts.

Mrs. Brown surely understands this political reality.

With the fiscal credibility of the Dyster administration circling the drain, the controller is preparing her post-Dyster alibi: Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player.

Mayor Dyster has written the music, and Mrs. Brown has willingly banged out Dyster's tune for the past 51 months on her budget piano.

It's too late to pretend it never happened.

Mayor Paul Dyster and Maria Brown declined to return repeated calls seeking interviews.

Niagara Falls Reporter

www.niagarafallsreporter.com

April 17 2012