The heavy cloak of secrecy surrounding the identities of the "anonymous donors" who will, to a significant degree, be funding the administration of Mayor Paul Dyster over the next four years has led to widespread speculation and criticism by many of the same people who elected him to office.
The money is coming from something called the "Building a Better Niagara Falls Fund," an organization that for all intents and purposes did not exist prior to the last week in April and exists now only in newspaper accounts of new City Administrator Donna Owens' recent hiring.
Charitable organizations are required to be listed with the New York Department of State in order for contributors to receive a tax deduction on their donations, and a check this week by the Reporter shows no such organization listed in state records.
The money is being -- for lack of a better word -- laundered through the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo, an umbrella corporation that controls more than 700 various funds and endowments in Western New York. Again, nothing called the "Building a Better Niagara Falls Fund" can be found on the organization's Web site, despite the fact that a whole special section is devoted to listing the various charities under its control.
State Sen. George Maziarz said Dyster's use of an anonymous funding source raises a number of questions.
"In all my years in state and local government, I've never heard of anything like this," he said. "Can the trial lawyers set up an anonymous fund to pay for giving the city attorney a raise? What about the police, are they permitted to accept what amounts to an outside gratuity just for doing their jobs?"
And regardless of Dyster's view on the legality of the slush fund that's been created for him, Maziarz added, it is all but certain that state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli will want to conduct a full review of the process.
"The comptroller has made transparency in government the cornerstone of his office," Maziarz said. "I just can't believe that something this outlandish is going to get past his review."
An undetermined amount of money has already been spent conducting a nationwide search that led to the hiring of Donna Owens of Atlanta, and the fund will also cover about $35,000 of the new administrator's pay, Dyster said. It is also paying for professional headhunters to go out and find the city a new corporation counsel and municipal engineer, along with an economic development director and a director of tourism, two positions for which no money has been set aside in the city's 2008 budget.
As with the city administrator's job, the fund will underwrite a large part of the salaries for the four other positions, in addition to paying the costs associated with the national search.
Owens' $110,000 salary in the city administrator's office will be astronomical not just by Niagara Falls standards, but by any standard. When Chris Collins took office as Erie County executive in January, his salary was pegged at just $104,000, for example, despite the fact that Erie County has more than 200 times as many residents as the city of Niagara Falls.
"If it's not illegal, it sure looks unethical," said Niagara Falls resident Jim Gray, in a letter sent to various media outlets. "How much did the people who put up the money have to do with who got the job? Who are these people?"
For his part, Dyster won't say, despite repeated media attempts to find out. One thing is certain: Whoever they are, they are very interested in helping our current mayor, and that interest extends to the city as well. The investment they have apparently committed to make will cost them as much as a million dollars over the next four years.
Are they acting out of the kindness of their hearts, or do they have some sort of agenda for the future of our community? Dyster, who based much of his election-year sloganeering on transparency and openness in city government, is remaining tight-lipped. If the secrecy surrounding the "Building a Better Niagara Falls Fund" is any indication, Dyster appears to have all but abandoned the starry-eyed idealism that characterized his campaign and adopted the same sort of backdoor dealing he decried when his predecessor in office, Vince Anello, operated in a similar fashion.
In any event, it appears that Owens got out of Atlanta, where she worked in the Department of Public Works as a deputy commissioner handling solid waste disposal, right in the nick of time.
A May 1 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on an order by Mayor Shirley Franklin to lay off 441 municipal employees there, including 215 in the DPW. Those workers and managers who escaped termination are now facing pay cuts in the face of a massive, $70 million city budget shortfall, the paper reported.
Owens holds no advanced degrees, earning her bachelor's from Hood College, a tiny Maryland institution affiliated with the United Church of Christ. Prior to her Atlanta job, she worked in the waste management divisions of the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore municipal governments.
Former county attorney Ned Perlman, who was a strong Dyster supporter during the recent election, told the Reporter that he believes it is always a mistake to hire employees based on the availability of one-shot grant money.
"Even when the money is coming from the federal government, you never know when they might pull the plug on the funding program," he said. "The other part of that has to do with pensions. In this case, you're paying based on a $110,000 salary, and I'm sure the city, not the donors, will be responsible for that, so to say it comes at 'no cost to the taxpayers' is a bit misleading."
Perlman also pointed out that, once the four-year funding program ends, the city's taxpayers will be faced with either dropping the salaries back down to a level they can afford or continuing to pay the wildly inflated amounts that have been promised.
Jim Gray's concerns were more pragmatic, given the recent scale of corruption and backroom dealing that has characterized Niagara Falls City Hall for about as long as anyone can remember.
"Are these people who do business with the city or want to do business with the city? The mayor seems to know but he won't tell," he said. "I can't believe the City Council went along with this. Are they really that naive, or do they know who these people are, too, and want to get in on whatever is going on?"
While city residents have speculated, sometimes only half jokingly, that the money is coming from the Buffalo Mob, "Smokin' Joe" Anderson or even Osama bin Laden, most agree that the most likely source is the nefarious Buffalo Niagara Partnership, given that the organization's kingpin, CEO Andrew Rudnick, also sits on the board of directors of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.
For nearly three decades, Rudnick and his BNP have succeeded only in keeping Buffalo a crumbling relic with a serious inferiority complex, though since the Seneca Niagara Casino compact was inked during the administration of Irene Elia, the group has made several unsuccessful attempts to sink its claws into Niagara Falls and the new money it represents.
The BNP is virulently anti-union, supports government funding only when it directly benefits its membership, and has enjoyed the unconditional support of both the Buffalo News and the Niagara Gazette, two area businesses that belong to the organization.
Lowlights of the Partnership's involvement here include:
Jim Gray, for one, said he is saddened by the recent developments, since he had a lot of hope for the Dyster administration.
"Oh well, it's what we've come to expect," he said. "It's just the same old Niagara Falls -- nothing ever changes."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 20 2008 |