Author: buffalopundit

Betty Jean Grant: GOP Staffer Had Prohibited Smartphone

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Remember the little audit that wasn’t? It supposedly uncovered the Democratic legislative majority’s (which was actually a Republican-led coalition between 2010 – 2012, but who’s counting), wasteful spending on snacks and toner by the Democratic legislature over the last five years.

While political in purpose, I suspect that the review’s purpose was to weed out wasteful or improper spending, regardless of party. That’s not, however, how it’s shaken out. While Democrats were criticized for “troubling” and “blatant” waste and lack of oversight, the Republicans escaped criticism.

Minority leader Betty Jean Grant is accusing Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw of covering up improper cell phone use by a former Republican leg staffer and current Mychajliw employee, Bryan Fiume.

Grant specifically charges that Mychajliw’s office is whitewashing Fiume’s misdeeds.

Fiume worked at the legislature as Minority Chief of Staff, having been hired immediately after the January 2010 ‘Coalition’ fired 11 Democratic staff members in the reorganization that year.  Fiume moved over to the legislature from County Executive Chris Collins’ office that year, and Fiume remained as Minority Chief of Staff until late December 2013, when Mychajliw hired him as his Chief-of-Staff.

Democrats charge that Mychajliw’s hyperpartisan review of legislature spending omitted the fact that Fiume has been wasting Erie County money for years, after somehow gaining access to a taxpayer-paid Erie County smart phone, without ever telling anyone.

The legislature’s 2012 policies and procedures are here; the document for 2013 is here. The legislature expressly forbids any taxpayer-funded cellphones or smartphones for staff. Grant has now sent a request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain Fiume’s cell phone records to find out what, exactly, the county paid for.

Betty Jean Grant FOIL

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Below is the Comptroller’s review of “DISS Use and Control of Wireless Devices” (DISS stands for Department of Informational & Support Services) that was clocked into the legislature two weeks before the legislature’s review of expenditures. It received no attention, and no breathless hyperbole from the traveling Comptroller.

Comptroller Review of Wireless Devices in Erie County

//www.scribd.com/embeds/222009637/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&show_recommendations=true

The Wireless Devices’ review disclosed (PDF page 14) that Fiume had a County-issued smart phone during the review period – possibly from the time he left Collins’ office until the day he left the legislature.  He was, actually, the only legislative employee – staffer or elected – who had a county-issued phone. If you look at the policies and procedures shown above, they expressly state,

Cellular Telephone – Cellular telephones and other portable communication devices are not budgeted for [2012 and] 2013, and are not reimbursable expenses.

A communication from DISS submitted to the legislature following the Wireless Devices’ review indicated that Fiume surrendered the smart phone in late December 2013.  Grant wants to find out more details about this, because it’s possible that Fiume enjoyed the use of a contraband socialized smartphone for almost four years. In her FOIL letter, Grant writes,

…according to the Wireless Devices’ review, “Chapter X, Section 10, of the Erie County Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual details the official policy regarding the use of wireless telephones,” and specifically lists “key administrative staff” as employees eligible for use of such devices. As the former Chief of Staff for the Minority Caucus at the Legislature, not only did Mr. Fiume have no authority allowing him use of a taxpayer-paid smart phone pursuant to Legislature policy, he also was not in any “key administrative staff” position while employed by the Legislature.

County wireless policy further prohibits, as stated in the Wireless Devices’ review,“the transfer of wireless phones from departments or worksites and/or changes in services ‘without the direct authority of supervision’

Consider that this should have clearly fallen well within the five-year review period requested by Chairman John Mills, and also constitute “wasteful spending”;  such a low-level employee would have absolutely no legitimate public need for such a prohibited device.  Yet Mychajliw chose not to include this in the legislature review?  Why? Why did Fiume not surrender the smart phone when Collins left office?

Grant is also going to try to find out why the legislature had no information whatsoever about this hidden smartphone, which appeared in no contemporaneous budget documents, and in contravention of longstanding leg policy.

This is alarming not because of the amount of money involved – Fiume’s smartphone cost the people around $50 per month. It’s alarming because of the contravention of policy, and how the Comptroller’s office is playing politics with its role as watchdog. Mychajliw excoriated the Democrats for mistakenly overpaying a stamp reimbursement by $0.90, but is ignoring this apparent blatant violation of county rules and regulations by a close friend and aide.

That’s not how good government works.

 

The “Audit” that Wasn’t an Audit

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Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw took a break from his busy schedule visiting random cultural sites and eating lunches at various and sundry senior centers, and released an “audit” revealing $70,000 in expenditures over five years that Mr. Mychajliw doesn’t like. The new Republican majority in the legislature commissioned this “audit”, and the best anyone could do was to find about $14,000 per year in allegedly excessive spending each year between  2009 – 2013.

“Audit” gets scarequotes because it wasn’t an audit. Even Mychajliw’s office calls it what it was – a review. It was not subject to any of the requirements or restrictions necessary within an audit environment.

For a $1.1 billion operation, $14,000 per year isn’t that horrible. But don’t tell the Comptroller that.

The manner in which taxpayer dollars were spent is troubling. We are concerned by the blatant misuse of county funds. The lack of oversight on spending leaves us disheartened,” Mychajliw said in a statement announcing the release of the audit

That strong language is out of proportion with the actual findings. The findings showed some pretty mild incidents of  unnecessary and excessive spending, but no “blatant misuse” or some pervasive “lack of oversight”. When does Stefan’s campaign end?

Wasteful? There are a few items that could have been handled differently, but nothing excessive.  Take a look at the major findings.

The 45-page report details nearly $5,000 that the Legislature spent on personal items. These included expenditures for snacks that were provided to outside guests who were honored by legislators at their bimonthly meetings; flowers; a shoe rack and the cost to stock some district offices with toilet paper.

Here’s what Democratic minority chairwoman Betty Jean Grant said about the snacks:

…most the food was purchased for World War II, Korean, Vietnam and the current War Veterans who have served their Country and who are members of the Valor for Valor Committee I created to assist our veterans. The refreshment they consumed after the county hall meetings, were not nearly as expensive as some of the things they lost such as limbs and even the lives for those who did not make it back. Someone needs to be ashamed of this despicable show of narrow-mindedness.

And toilet paper. Toilet paper? Do you remember during the red/green budget fiasco of the last decade, when the county couldn’t afford to stock the bathrooms in the Rath Building with toilet paper, so Charmin donated a truck’s worth?  Setting aside for a moment whether district offices are necessary, if we’re going to have them, are we going to begrudge their bathrooms having county-funded toilet paper? What’s next? Toner? Paper?

The report also notes how the Legislature spent too much on toner for the printers it leased and how it continued to cover the cost of Internet access for one of the Democratic legislator’s district office nine months after it was destroyed by fire.

But better still is how Mychajliw’s release characterizes this:

The Legislature spent almost $5,000 for personal items like flowers, cakes, meals, shoe racks, toilet paper, stamps, potato chips, plastic utensils, tissues, cookies, even soil.

OMG EVEN SOIL!!1!

And if you still don’t think this was a wholly political play, regard this line from the exit conference section of the review:

During the Exit Conference, some concerns were addressed regarding the severity of some of these issues and the verbiage which was used in defining them. Due to this, verbiage in some instances within this report has been changed to more accurately reflect the issues found.

UPDATE: Did you catch this line? 

“I think the most important thing to note is the fact that the Legislature initially wanted us to look at just one year of spending,” Mychajliw said. “When we showed them what we found just over one year, they formally asked us to expand it to five years and go deeper.”

A correspondent notes that this comment is false.This letter from Legislator John Mills, dated February 18 specifically requests a five-year review. The Comptroller’s office’s review entrance letter is dated the same day (efficient!), and notes – ab initio – that the review will be for the 5 year period of Jan 1, 2009 to Dec 31, 2013.  So, the 5 year period was decided on day one, before any data had been compiled, transmitted, and well before any data had been reviewed. Indeed, none of the information was due until February 25th. Nobody ever “formally asked” anyone to “expand it to five years”. There exists no earlier letter asking for a one-year review.

I’ll grant you the internet access thing is, I suppose, “wasteful”, as is the retention of an official photographer – although the photographs are presented to recipients of various awards, and make these people feel appreciated.  But the review itself reveals that Time Warner is refunding the money. There is the matter of a 45-cent stamp for which a staffer was reimbursed three times. I offer that staffer my thoughts and prayers, as he or she works to repay that $0.90 debt to the county. This is petty within the literal meaning of that word, coming from the French petit or small.

We already know that honoring people is most of what the legislature accomplishes.  If you want to talk about wasteful spending, it’s can rationally be argued that having an Erie County Legislature is, itself, fundamentally wasteful; its ministerial, rote “functions” outweigh its discretionary ones.

To give you some perspective, here’s what I wrote about the toilet paper fiasco of ’05.

Charmin wants to donate a truck’s worth of Charmin to the Rath Building. George Holt has already allocated some of his member money to his brother’s son’s girlfriend’s shell company, which knows a guy who can get some toilet paper that fell off a truck. So, they don’t need Charmin.

Thankfully, that sort of intentional and pervasive George Holt/Chuck Swanick style corruption is long gone. So is member money.

This whole thing is a persuasive argument against the continuation of partisan elections for the legislature. If this had been in any way legitimate, it would have been undertaken without the “aha” confrontational tone. None of this stuff is a big, earth-shattering deal, and there is no evidence whatsoever of deliberate waste or wrongdoing. The excessive rhetoric in the review and its accompanying press materials belies the notion that this was an apolitical review of allegedly excessive spending.  It is, instead, a wholly political piece of campaign literature.

And you paid for it.

Mincing Upper East Siders for DiPietro

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Western New York’s most hilarious Assemblyman, the dry cleaner-turned Fredo-turned Obamaphobe tea party Assemblyman David DiPietro, is going to be holding a fundraiser in the wilds of East Aurora, and there’ll be a gun raffle, to boot.

Donald Trump and wife Melania Trump

Upper East Side man with Consort, Mincing in Tuxedo

Because nothing says “re-elect my homophobic Assemblyman” more than the ability to fondle a long, hard shaft.  To touch it; caress it and wonder what sort of explosive wonders it might be capable of.  There will also be chicken and booze. Possibly a 50/50, and an exponentially increased risk of catastrophic injury.

When the Buffalo News asked DiPietro to comment, he mouth-shat:

I know this fundraiser raises a few Upper East Side eyebrows, but I represent rural Western New York. Here, we don’t mince around in tuxedos. We hunt and fish so why not? We didn’t know when we came up with the idea but this turns out to be a really fun event

So, playbook. It’s rural “real America” versus the pointy-headed tuxedoed wealthy on the Upper East Side. Urban liberals. Jews. Blacks. You know – other. No word yet on whether there will be any Freudian therapists on hand to assist what will likely be predominately white male attendees with their palpable subconscious castration anxiety.

Let’s backtrack for just a second and recall that DiPietro spent about a month massaging Trump’s prostate recruiting Donald Trump to run for Governor. Donald Trump – a rich blowhard who wears tuxedoes and lives on New York’s Upper East Side.  Trump is a notorious tack merchant who has yet to prove that he is not the offspring of an Orangutan.

But this whole sportsman meme that DiPietro has concocted for himself is somewhat enchanting.  Go to his campaign webpage and the only issue to which he’s devoted more than just a picture caption is guns. Gun rights, gun raffle, gun this, gun that. Everything else is given less than a complete sentence.

The reason, of course, is that as a Republican member of the Assembly, DiPietro is paid about $80,000 in state money, plus a pension if he makes it 10 years in the system, sweet benefits,  a $9,000 stipend as “ranking member of the small business committee”, a staff, and a travel per diem, to do nothing except pontificate about guns. Because of Albany’s antidemocratic structural dysfunction, DiPietro’s presence in Albany is reduced to that of loudmouthed seatcover.

(But you’ll never, ever see all those Republicans who rail against public sector employees and their unions bitch and moan about worthless GOP Assembly members making 100 large per year to drive to Albany and park their cars. Now ask your Republican Assemblysitter whether they’ve done anything to, e.g., promote the reforms set forth a decade ago by NYU’s Brennan Center. Then tell me what the crickets sound like.)

David DiPietro is an Italian-American dry cleaner from the tony Buffalo suburb of East Aurora – home to the Roycrofters and Fisher-Price. He’s not some outdoorsman hero who gets to pretend like he’s any more or less a real American than anyone else.

Even tuxedo-mincing Upper East Side alleged-billionaire elitist Donald Trump.

When Kathy Told Rush She Was Going Galt

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Courtesy of @KathyWeppner4NY, Here is the audio of Kathy Weppner’s (R-Galt’s Gulch) pledge to His Rushness that she and her husband are going to earn less before Obummer’s cadre’s take it all.

http://telly.com/embed.php?guid=1IH4DKR&autoplay=0

Is anyone going to follow up with her on this? Has Dr. Weppner, in fact, cut back his hours so as to protect his income from Barry’s commissars? Also, when can we expect to see her audio and text archives come back online? Is there something she’s hiding?

Revisiting the Tea Party Schism

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There was once a listserv called “ReformNYS” that, for some time, was a collection of outrages and calls to action shared among the Ron Paul libertarian wing of the local tea party. It never really had many ideas about reforming New York State, and it’s managed to reform exactly nothing.

By contrast, the Palinist wing of the tea party has found multiple causes celebre about which to agitate, thanks in large part to the NY SAFE Act, which places restrictions on people’s ability to massacre, e.g., almost 2 dozen schoolchildren in a matter of seconds. 

Now? The Ron Paul wing’s listserv has devolved into this:

The author of that garbage (he posts something almost every day along these lines, always ending with a demand that the reader “wake up”, was a leader of the tea party movement back in 2009 – 2010. Chris Smith and I wrote extensively about Allen Coniglio’s weird obsessions and his sudden political activism that began around January 2009. With stuff like this:

Buffalo Tea Party organizer Allen Coniglio told me that Paladino is a “decent person” and that this story is a smear.

Coniglio made it clear that he and the Buffalo Tea Party denounced the content of the e-mails and “do not support any racist positions of any kind. ” This story, he said, was the kind of thing he’d come to expect from the media and liberal activists.”…

…People are different (ed. from the 18th and 19th century) because there are many more unproductive slackers due to big government, new slaveholder interventions and slave breeding programs. People of the type created by these programs would not have existed in any measurable quantity as there would have been little possibility of survival prior to the advent of the modern welfare state.

Slacking is now in the genes of the people who have been on welfare for 3 or 4 generations or more and these people are now, for all intents and purposes, societally worthless, ineducable and probably beyond redemption.

Yes, they are different because they have been bred to do nothing but slack and vote for Democrats by their slavemasters Jackson, Sharpton, Farrakhan, Reid, Kerry, Kennedy, the Clintons, etc..

Sounds eerily like what got cowboy hat welfare queen Cliven Bundy in trouble this past week.

Suffice it to say that one of the guys who was instrumental in bringing the Tea Party Express travel write-off to Buffalo is now circulating the crap reproduced above.

Cop Block WNY’s Debut

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A police officer is empowered to use reasonable force to overcome resistance and effect a lawful arrest. Once a person is subdued and in custody, however, smacking, hitting, or kicking the suspect is straight up brutality. If you hit a handcuffed suspect who’s lying on the ground, you’re basically torturing him.

But why? They don’t appear to be asking him any questions. They’re not trying to get information – there’s no evidence he’s giving that the courts can suppress.  They appear merely to be battering him for the sake of it.

That is to say, there’s a fine line between using force lawfully to subdue a suspect who is resisting arrest, and sadism. So, I’d love to know what precipitated this.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxLivtiv6Yo]

I’d also like to take this opportunity to remind people that your smartphone’s shape is like a widescreen TV, but only when you hold it horizontally. If you take video in the vertical aspect, that video is going to suck.

 

In the News

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Blue Sky Optimism

Blue Sky Optimism by ardvorak79

A few things worth reading in the Buffalo News:

Colin Dabkowski has quickly become a must-read every Sunday. His columns are direct, pithy, and insightful. This week, he weighs in on the city’s revival of its public arts program.

Although I’m not a huge fan of nostalgia, I think that Bruce Andriatch’s look back at his time at a defunct Olean-area restaurant and hotel is poignant and interesting.

The News’ endorsements for the upcoming school board election are notable for being exclusively Caucasian in a predominately African-American district. It would seem that there will be a lot of whitesplaining going on over the next year. But understand that when Paladino’s agenda is unsuccessful, he’s going to have to own that and he won’t have any “sisterhood” to blame anymore.

Buffalo’s own news historian guru, Steve Cichon, has begun curating the “BN Chronicles”, highlighting interesting stories from the News’ archives. Nestled between stories detailing America’s intervention in the Mexican Revolution, there’s this 1969 story about moving the Williamsville toll back past the Transit exit (never happened, we’re still arguing about it), a Buffalo Bill selling cars during the off-season, a story about fledgling gay rights in 1984, and a 1969 piece about “high speed rail”.

Sacred Heart Academy refused to print an alumna’s same-sex marriage announcement in its alumni periodical. The woman in charge of the magazine expressed that she was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“I’m very sorry that we can’t publish your pictures and your good news in the Cordecho,” Sister Edith Wyss wrote. “We had a similar request several years ago and we did publish that announcement of the marriage of an alum to her partner. We did expect some negative response and we got some.

“However some readers of the Cordecho also contacted the Diocese of Buffalo. The bishop sent a diocesan official to meet with us at SHA to make sure that we understood what we had done,” Wyss wrote. “In their view, we were publicly supporting same-sex marriage. In our view, we were supporting our alumnae.”

The bottom line, according to Wyss, was that the Cordecho – published three times a year in winter, spring and fall – could not again print news or photos related to same-sex marriage.

One person posted a comment on my Facebook wall, indicating that Nardin has no problem announcing alums’ same-sex marriages, so all of this is a bit odd. But then, read what Buffalo’s bishop has to say:

“I am grateful that the leadership of Sacred Heart Academy has done the right thing and has not compromised its Catholic mission and values. While Sacred Heart is not a diocesan school, it is a Catholic school within the diocese, and I have responsibility for Catholic identity there and in every Catholic school, diocesan or not.”

Yet Pope Francis famously said, “[i]f someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” While not a full-throated endorsement of same-sex marriage, it’s certainly more loving and tolerant than what Buffalo’s bishop has to say. 

Sacred Heart Academy reportedly has no problem cashing homosexual students’ and alumnae’s checks.

I’m Offended You’re Offended

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It’s a jokey thing to do – “pardon the butter lamb”. Erie County Executive Poloncarz did that sometime during that week before Easter when Polish WNYers rediscover their old neighborhood.  This attempt at humor (you can’t really pardon a thing that doesn’t live) has outraged at least one person,

In what at first appeared to be a harmless political stunt, Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz ventured over to the Broadway Market to pardon a butter lamb today. For some community leaders in touch with their Christian faiths, it wasn’t so harmless after all.

“It is clear that Mr. Poloncarz and his staff are blatantly ignorant to the significance of the butter lamb and its portrayal of Jesus as the Lamb of God. The title Lamb of God was given to Jesus by the Apostle John to clarify to the flock that in giving his life for mankind, he embodied the ultimate sacrifice,” said one Catholic political insider. “For Mark Poloncarz to think he has the ability and authority to pardon that sacrifice, eliminating it’s necessity – even if it was just a political stunt – is incredibly offensive. We are in the midst of the holiest week in the liturgical calendar, and there is just no room for such ignorance.”

The first reaction a reasonable person might have might be, “lighten up, Francis”.

The second reaction might be to pose a question. If the lump of butter molded into a lamb shape and sold in a box is such a holy portrayal of Jesus, why are we cutting it with a knife and eating it? Are we all Romans, symbolically sacrificing a dairy portrayal of the Messiah?

It was a joke – a marketing stunt.  It was an effort to promote Buffalo, the Broadway Market, our Easter traditions, Polish heritage, and the company that makes the butter lamb. Google it, and you’ll notice that the stunt worked – it was picked up as a “weird news” story on the AP wire, and  ABC, MSN, Fox, the Times of Malta,  and the Washington Post all ran the story.  Poloncarz didn’t just pardon any old lamb, but one manufactured by the Malczewski company, which gleefully promoted the Poloncarz pardon on its Facebook page.

How does the “Catholic insider” jibe his offense with Exodus 20:4 – 6?

Maybe don’t be so offended. He wasn’t really pardoning anything, and the butter lamb isn’t Jesus. 

Weppner Word Salad

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Buffalo’s own Sarah Palin, Kathy Weppner, has updated her website with “issues”. To say that these items amount to incomprehensible word salad is a wild understatement. My favorite is how guns will protect from the evil of power outages.  I distinctly remember how, during the October Storm, my neighborhood devolved into a post-apocalyptic hell where roaming bands of zombies attacked homes, seeking rotten food and working powerstrips. I found that a Glock was the best substitute for a cellphone during that time.

Or maybe not. Maybe everything was just fine and, to date, I’ve managed to live my life without uttering the phrase, “gosh, I wish I had a gun with me in this particular situation”.

Seriously, these passages look like they were written by a 3rd grader whose parents listen to Rush Limbaugh in the car. The only things missing are flags, eagles, a Lee Greenwood soundtrack, and some patriotic emoji.

Weppner’s Policy Word Salad

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