August 16, 2002
Masiello's last campaign
Masiello's last campaign
by Bruce Jackson
Buffalo's literate dead
This past week, most of the talk around town about the possible recall vote on Mayor Anthony Masiello has focused on former Mayor Jimmy Griffin's apparent enlistment of the dearly departed and randomly nonresident as signatories in his recall petition campaign. If there are too many dead folks and nonresidents on those petitions, the whole issue vaporizes; if enough of the signers are alive and living in Buffalo, Tony Masiello has a problem.
Why should anyone be surprised about the dirty petitions? Remember when Griffin backed his buddy the parks commissioner, the one who poisoned Delaware Park lake when he was told he could no longer run an illegal hotdog operation in the park? A mayor with that kind of fidelity to a pal wouldn't let mere death or nonresidency stand in the way of anyone's participation in the democratic process.
The whole story has turned more into a riff on how Griffin is the same irresponsible nutcase he was when he was mayor, which probably gives enormous pleasure and relief to Tony Masiello— who seems to have been spending a good deal of public and private money trying to deflect this entire issue.
There are still flutters of speculation about who Griffin's partners in this operation might be, as if Jimmy Griffin needed any partner for anything. He's a bored old boozer who's burnt out on daytime soaps and game shows. He's got the whole town atwitter and he's seeing his name in the papers once again. There may be a lot of people around town who would love to see Tony run the campaign he didn't have to run last year when the Republicans and the Democrats and the bankers and developers held their noses and made sure the citizens of Buffalo would have no choice on that line at the polls.
The contenders, or not
Sam Hoyt and Byron Brown are two of the pols who've been frequently named as secret underwriters of the campaign. That doesn't make any sense. If Masiello loses a recall vote then Common Council President James Pitts becomes mayor until the next one is elected. That office is a bully pulpit and the last thing those guys want is to have Pitts get a year's head start on the next election, should he want to run for mayor in the next election.
Pitts, of course, has also been blamed for this. One of the reasons given for Masiello's refusal to be a peacemaker, to use his office to calm some of the angry feelings around the current attempt to restructure the Common Council, is his rage at Pitts because of his secret involvement in the recall campaign. Absent any evidence—and no one has adduced a jot of it—I find a secret coalition between Pitts and Griffin unimaginable. The only thing those two guys have in common is their first names.
No doubt Pitts would be delighted if Masiello had to defend his record and lost. And no doubt Masiello is in a rage at Pitts anyhow.
Is it legal?
The other really important question, which will come back to the surface in the unlikely case that Griffin's petitions survive scrutiny, is whether or not citizens of Buffalo have the right to recall their mayor in the first place.
Joe Illuzzi, who publishes the daily web newsletter PoliticsWNY.com, argues that the state constitution prohibits local recall. Joe went to court trying to have Griffin's campaign shut down, but Judge Eugene Fahey tossed his lawsuit out, saying it was too early to do that. I think the sense of his ruling was that anybody can circulate petitions for anything they want, that the time for a court action invalidating them is after they've been submitted and evaluated for legitimacy by the county clerk. Fahey got some heat for not recusing himself from this case, since he was the guy Masiello beat the first time he was elected mayor, in a campaign a lot of people still remember as grubby, even for Buffalo. On the other hand, Fahey was on the Common Council, and so was Tony Masiello, when the city's recall legislation was enacted. Both of them voted for it and presumably know a good deal about its history, so perhaps it is as reasonable for Fahey to have handled this early legal action as it is hypocritical of the mayor to claim that the legislation he helped draft and enact doesn't really apply to him.
One thing I really like about Illuzzi is that he is always willing to include on his website material with which he disagrees entirely. He and I disagree about a lot of things and every time I've sent him a note saying "You're dead wrong on this and here's why I think so...." he's run the whole thing, with no clipping and cutting and no snide editorial remarks fore or aft. Try that with the Buffalo News or Artvoice.
I mention Illuzzi's willingness to publish the other side because in one of his releases for August 16 he quotes a reader who sent him some lines from Article IX, Section 2(c)1 of the New York state constitution that seem to contradict Illuzzi's own argument.
Section 2 of Article IX deals with "Powers and duties of legislature; home rule powers of local governments; statute of local governments." Here's the text of secction 2.(c)1, with the key word highlighted so you won't miss it:
(1) The powers, duties, qualifications, number, mode of selection and removal, terms of office, compensation, hours of work, protection, welfare and safety of its officers and employees, except that cities and towns shall not have such power with respect to members of the legislative body of the county in their capacities as county officers.
That seems to say that municipalities have the authority to set the terms for removal of their own elected officials. They can't set terms for firing a county executive or a county legislator, but they very well can decide what they have to do to rid themselves of any elected official whose job occurs entirely within the municipal border: councilperson, comptroller, mayor.
Unless someone finds a section elsewhere in the New York state constitution saying we don't have to take section IX seriously, any mayor in New York state can indeed be recalledon terms set by the municipality itself.
If the dead and nonresident are sufficiently present in Jimmy Griffin's petitions, Tony Masiello can relax, at least for this year. But if the quick sufficiently outnumber the dead, the mayor's got one last campaign.
Click here for the full text of Article IX of the NY State Constitution.
Click here for links to each article of the NY State Constitution.
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