Buffalo lawmakers want more time to review mayor’s budgets

The measures were born out of Council members’ frustration with the mayor’s proposed 9% tax increase in May in his 2024-25 municipal budget.

The Council wants to require the Mayor to hold a public hearing on budget proposals in future years to gather community input before submitting a budget to Council. The Law Department is currently studying the need for a referendum.

Meanwhile, the amendments proposed by the Council on Tuesday have been referred to the Council’s Legislation Committee for discussion next Tuesday.

One requires the mayor to submit a detailed budget to the council by April 1 of each year, instead of May 1 as is currently the case. Another requires that any mayoral proposal that would require a tax increase above the state cap or a cut in services be submitted to the council by March 1 of each year.

“I think that by asking that if there is a change in local law … to accommodate a tax increase, it’s reasonable to ask that it be done no later than March 1,” Ellicott City Councilmember Leah Halton-Pope said at a recent finance committee meeting. “I also think that having a draft budget by at least April 1 gives us plenty of time.”

Another amendment under consideration states that if the Council makes additions to the budget proposed by the Mayor, those additions must be submitted to the Mayor by May 26 instead of May 22.

“More time to review proposed budgets gives the council more time to do its due diligence,” said Mitchell P. Nowakowski, a Fillmore council member and chairman of the Finance Committee.

“Yes, there will be additional responsibility for the mayor and his office, but we also have a responsibility and a role to play,” Nowakowski said.

And another amendment stipulates that a final budget must be adopted before June 8.

Council members were frustrated with how the 2024-25 budget negotiations played out. Some were upset about what they called a lack of communication with the Brown administration early in the process. And a few rejected Brown’s request that the council pass a local law allowing the city to exceed the state’s 2% cap on tax increases. Brown’s request came the day before he was to present his 2024-25 budget recommendations on May 1.

“This was a critically important decision that we should have made long before,” Niagara City Council member David A. Rivera said at the finance committee meeting. “If we had had time to discuss it, to negotiate, to work with the administration, we probably would have agreed with them on many of the things they were proposing.”

“We sometimes wait until the last minute to make crucial decisions, and we are under a lot of pressure to approve things at the very last minute,” he added. “I don’t want the Council to make crucial decisions without enough time.”

Finally, the Council approved a $618 million budget in May that reduced property tax increases from 9% to 7.5%, saving property owners a small amount on their tax bills. The budget went into effect July 1.

North Council member Joseph Golombek Jr. was primarily concerned about how a new timetable would affect the budget process.

“How have we been able to do all this over the last 30, 40, 50 years without needing changes? Today, with modern technology, it seems like it would be easier, transparency would be easier,” Golombek said. “Why do we need to make these changes now and will they necessarily be beneficial once they’re made? I’m just not convinced that it’s for or against at this point.”