We all wondered when Donna Owens was going to do something. Hired in June at a salary of $110,000 a year, Owens has largely worked four-day weeks since, only occasionally deigning to come in on a Friday. In addition, she has set the world's record for going on vacation, taking as many as five weeks off during the first five months of her employment, according to several City Hall sources.
When four out of five Niagara Falls voters swept Mayor Paul Dyster into office in November 2007, a pervasive sense of optimism led to a common belief that positive change would be quick in coming. After the ugly, four-year circus that was the administration of former mayor Vince Anello -- who is now under federal indictment on numerous felony charges relating to public corruption -- the thought of Dyster, who was seen as a fundamentally decent guy running to help his hometown rather than himself, seemed refreshing indeed.
As much as I like the newspaper business, I could get used to this book-writing gig in a big hurry. All you have to do is spend a couple of months sleeping all day and staying up all night so you can write without the telephone ringing and, before you know it, people are asking you to be on their TV shows!
They played a football game in Toronto on Saturday and, as has happened in so many big games before, the team from Buffalo came out on the losing end of the score.
On the eve of the New Year, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, charged with conspiring to sell the Senate seat of Barack Obama, put the ball back squarely in the court of a Democratic Party that had disowned him.
We should not totally put out of mind the dark path we've been down the past eight years, lest we allow future leaders to take us there again. Let's long remember our old acquaintances of the Bush years.
According to sources close to the situation, the state has informed downtown developer Joseph "Smokin' Joe" Anderson that the $1.6 million deal he made last fall to sell the Wintergarden and his 30-year lease on the adjacent East Mall walkway will be reduced by $800,000, half the agreed-upon purchase price.
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