State Senator Sean Ryan appeared on 'Weekend Edition' on Saturday, May 31, 2025 with BTPM NPR's Jamal Harris Jr. to discuss his campaign for Buffalo mayor.
Below is a transcription of that interview, it's been edited for clarity:
Jamal Harris Jr.: We have the pleasure of being joined in studio by current state senator and mayoral candidate Sean Ryan. Mr. Ryan, how are you?
Sen. Sean Ryan: I'm great. Thanks for having me here this morning. I got to see you last night, and this morning.
Harris: We get around, don't we? Mr. Ryan, staying on topic of the arts here in Buffalo. And again, this is great research done by our reporter here, Holly Kirkpatrick. Since 2020 alone, the city of Buffalo has allocated approximately $1.6 million to its aid of arts and anti violence budget line, but only $190,000 of that has actually got got out to organizations. As mayor of the City of Buffalo, can the residents trust that under your leadership, this money will actually be distributed as budgeted?
Ryan: Yeah, the fact that the city doesn't, they budget money, and they don't allocate it, it just shows that it's a scam. You know, they did a wink to the public and said, 'we're going to fund arts this year,' but then they never spend it. It's the same thing with the federal money, all the ARPA money they promised arts organizations at the end of it, they, shorted them all. But this is what happened. You know, this is the Scanlon administration. It's a continuation of his 12 years of rubber stamping of bad budgets and really short change in the community all along the way. You know, you could see [Scanlon] didn't even show up last night [to arts forum] to justify why he's not funding the arts.
Harris: The majority of those years were under the Brown administration. But obviously, Scanlon was, you know, a councilman before...
Ryan: And he was the council president and he was the chair of the Finance Committee.
Harris: I was going to even bring up, even on this year, I know these past couple months, $400,000 has been budgeted for the arts, but only $58,000 of that has been spent. It's been a kind of a growing theme of your campaign that, it's just time for city hall to have, a new perspective, someone who hasn't been in city government. As you have mentioned, is this kind of the theme you have been getting at?
Ryan: Yeah, it's the idea that if you've been in city hall too long, like Acting Mayor Scanlon, as you start thinking that it's normal, the way you do things. You know, promising Ujima Theater money and then shorting them on it. You know, promising Pastor Giles and Back to Basics, to do violence interrupting money and then shorting them on it becomes the norm. And then telling the arts community, we're going to give you $400,000 and not doing it. It's just, you know, one more way to balance your budget, but you're balancing it on the backs of the people of City of Buffalo. Buffalo deserves better. That's why I'm running for mayor. We need to turn the page. We need to bring in fresh, real leadership into the City of Buffalo if we want the change.
Harris: I'm glad you brought up the city budget, because that's going to be a very hot topic going into this election cycle. The projected deficit for the 2025 through 2026 fiscal year is looking to be approximately $70 million. I mean, that's a huge financial shortfall. You know, with any financial shortfall, when you get out of it, you either have to raise revenue or cut expenses or some kind of combination of both. You know, Acting Mayor Scanlon has proposed 8% property tax, and [a] hotel occupancy tax. These are plans you have been critical of. You care to explain why?
Ryan: This is just one more kick in the can down the road. It's like saying we're going to fund the arts, but not funding it. And that's how you balance your budget. The parking ramps generate $5 million a year and selling them to cover your shortfall? That's just to get you through this year? It's such bad government, and it's such bad government. You know, the the idea that we're approximately $70 million, it's because they won't tell us how much the real budget deficit is. You know, the budget they cobbled together is not going to get them through six months, and they're going to be out of money. So, you know, they just are afraid to tell the public how badly they've mismanaged the city and just how badly the budget is out of whack. We all do a better job balancing our checkbooks than the city does balancing its budget. And under Acting Mayor Scanlon's leadership, it's just more of the same, you know, this fakery and gimmicks and putting numbers on what they hope to get for parking ramps, knowing none of that money is going to come this fiscal year, and they're just going to end up doing short term borrowing at a very high cost. My proposal was to come clean, recognize how much your debt is going to be for the next three years. Take out a longer term bond, you know, to cover that to allow the city to get back on its feet. But Buffalo is just addicted to these one year budgets that don't work. And if we continue doing that, then you have no choice but to continue to short community groups promised money, but don't spend it, and once again, you're balancing the budget on the backs of the folks who live here, and we all deserve better.
Harris: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you guys are both in favor of kind of a hotel occupancy, hotel bed tax?
Ryan: I'm against the bed tax. I think you know that at this time with Canadians not coming over the border, our largest hotel in downtown Buffalo has been offline for a few years, it's a real challenge to get conventions to come here. It's the large blocks of hotels that are really price sensitive. So putting in a bed tax now is probably the worst time to put in a bed tax. And if we're going to do the bed tax, which I'm against, a portion of that bed tax should go to supports the arts, the cultural which drive tourists into this area. But right now, they're just looking for anything to close their short term gap. I mean, they're going to double the amount of money they say they're going to get from parking enforcement, you know, they're going to start booting and towing cars, not because it's in the public safety, but it's because they're trying to get more money out of people's pockets.
Harris: Right now, he's [Scanlon] proposing also an 8% property tax. You know, let's say you do becomes Buffalo city mayor. Do you plan on raising taxes? Let's just say maybe your first two years in office?
Ryan: Property taxes have to go up. You know, that's the mistake of the city for 10 years, they didn't raise taxes at all. But when you do that, it leads to a big rebound, where you have to raise taxes a lot, but we can't raise taxes a lot and quickly on Buffalo residents. We have so many people who live in the City of Buffalo, who own homes, who are low income, so they can't take this big shock, and that's why the city has to come clean on how much money they're in debt. Come up with an actual four-year plan, and that's got to have gradual increases of revenues from various sources, but you can't shock the taxpayers with massive tax increases in this year's unbalanced budget. You know, they won't get through the year with this. And you know, the other proposal that boggles me is, in addition to selling the parking ramps, they're entering conversations to try to sell Kleinhan's, to try to sell Shea's, sell the zoo. I mean, what are we thinking? We're having a fire sale in the City of Buffalo. It's just bad budgeting and bad leadership. And it's time for a change.
Harris: I know one of your proposals was letting the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Board issue deficit bonds, correct? Care here to explain, you know, what that is to listeners? Because they are going to hear that and say 'what is that?'
Ryan: That's pretty dense, right? So the Fiscal Stability Authority, what we call our control board, they're able to borrow at a much lower interest rate. So you'd rather have them do your borrowing than going through the city council to do it. And it's just like when you refinance your house. You know, you buy a house, you buy it on your certain income, and suddenly your job goes down. You know, do you sell your car? Like your parking ramps? Or do you say, let's refinance our debt and make it so my monthly payments go down. So my proposal is to acknowledge how much money you owe in the next three years, put together a long-term plan to borrow to cover that debt, pay it back with lower interest rates in at the meantime, bring in other revenue sources and stabilize your expenses. But you know that's a plan to get us down the road, as opposed to just kicking it down the road for one more budget cycle.
Harris: That proposal has caused a little bit of uproar here with some city leaders. I mean, they held a press conference, you know, criticizing your plans, saying it's like putting the deficit kind of on a credit card and kicking it kind of down the road. Do you believe those criticisms have any merit?
Ryan: No, I don't. I think you know, good sound budgeting practice is, you know, this is the way to go. You know, the old budget director, the former budget director for the county, Ken Kruly, looked at the plan and said, 'this is the way to go.' You need to be able to lower interest rate, pay this off, as opposed to selling your assets that generate revenue. You know, the last thing you want to do is sell the parking ramps, because they're golden gooses. They bring money in every year, $5 million a year they're going to throw away. So after eight years of selling the parking ramps, they're going to be in the negative then. But my plan gets us on stable footing for a longer period of time. And the credit card comment right now in Acting Mayor Scanlon's budget, it says that if the parking ramps don't go through, we're going to have to put money on a credit card, but they're going to pay much higher interest rates and have to pay it back in a really quick period of time, which is going to put them in the same budget hole next year.
Harris: Now let's say you, you know, do become Mayor of Buffalo. You know, two of your opponents, Scanlon, He has the South District council seat, which he'll likely go back to, and Rasheed Wyatt, University District councilman. You know, the council has been pretty favorable towards Scanlon. Obviously, you're painting yourself as an outsider. How are you going to collaborate with the Common Council? Do you anticipate running into any opposition in getting some legislative priorities through the council?
Ryan: Well, the council is supposed to have opposition with the mayor, that's their job. So I want the council to do their job, and I want them to be the check that they're supposed to be on the mayor's office. They're not supposed to be a rubber stamp. And that's kind of how we got into this problem is, you know, people like Chris Scanlon were a rubber stamp for the former administration. They didn't ask questions. You know, they just wanted their patronage and they wanted things to go okay for their district, but they didn't care about the whole city. I have very strong relationships with several council members. I know several council members who are interested in moving the community forward with my vision, and I am super, super optimistic that I have a very positive relationship, you know, with the council.
Harris: Right now, we got about close to a minute and a half left here, so I'll go quick with this last question. You know, it's a pretty fractious five candidates, lots of candidates in the field. Let's just say, Scanlon gets about 39% of the vote come primary, you get maybe 37%-38%. You're on the Working Families Party line. Do you plan on running in the general election under that line? And you know, kind of staying in this race for city mayor?
Ryan: No, I don't plan on staying in this race in November. I know that Acting Mayor Scanlon, you know, has put independent nominating positions on the street. Which makes me think that when I beat him in the primary, he'll probably run on the Republican and the Conservative lines, which would make sense, because his largest donors, you know, are people like Carl Paladino and MAGA Republicans. And I'm sure he feels more comfortable, you know, with the Republicans and the conservatives than he does with Democrats.
Harris: All right Mr. Sean Ryan, I appreciate you coming on this morning. Pleasure having you.
