Any doubts about the identity of contributors to Mayor Paul Dyster's subsidized executive search and hiring programs were dispelled last week by reports that he has interviewed the politically connected ex-wife of Buffalo Niagara Partnership CEO Andrew Rudnick, both as a possible replacement for city Comptroller Maria Brown and to fill a newly created position as the city's economic development director.
Eva Hassett has a longstanding reputation as a member of Buffalo's power elite and, when she married Rudnick on Nov. 19, 1995, it rated headlines in the Buffalo News as "the marriage of the year."
Alas, the couple's high-powered lifestyle left little room for romance, and they subsequently divorced, although they remain close. Most of the other 207 articles contained in the News' online archives concern her anti-union activities with the Greater Buffalo Development Foundation, her subsequent appointment by former Buffalo mayor Tony Masiello first as the city's director of administration and finance and then as his chief of staff, and her subsequent employment as an executive vice president with Savarino Construction.
There has been considerable speculation in recent weeks concerning the anonymous donors who are prepared to spend more than $1 million over the next four years on choosing the top members of Dyster's administration and seeing that they are compensated to a far greater degree than would be possible under the city's budget.
The legality of the slush fund -- euphemistically known as the "Building a Better Niagara Falls Fund" and administered by the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo -- is still uncertain. Rudnick serves on the foundation's board of directors, and numerous sources in both Erie and Niagara counties have confirmed that Partnership members have accounted for most of the fund's bankroll.
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.
And nothing called the "Building a Better Niagara Falls Fund" can be found on the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo's Web site, despite the fact that a whole special section is devoted to listing the various charities under its control.
For his part, Dyster has allowed the identities of the secretive donors to remain a mystery, despite numerous questions that have been raised by the media concerning the source of the funding.
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.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 27 2008 |