As the public dispute between Buffalo Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon and city comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams rumbles on, the city’s advisory board – known as the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority - called a meeting over the issue Wednesday.
Scanlon filed a lawsuit against Miller-Williams, Monday, seeking to compel her to issue and sell bonds already approved by the Common Council. The comptroller has refused to issue bond anticipation notes for portions of the budget, citing concerns that exceeding the city’s debt cap would be fiscally irresponsible.
Representatives from the warring sides were at the meeting, which advisory board secretary, Frederick Floss, said was called to quell the intergovernmental squabble.
"I think the confusion is - and you saw today - we have many different players all trying to do what they believe is right for the City of Buffalo. We wanted to get them all in the same room. We wanted to make recommendations and discuss with them how we're going to move forward," Floss said.
It was revealed that many of the policies used to determine the city’s borrowing limits have been in place since the 1970s. Back then, the city needed to drastically improve its credit rating. Both sides agreed that those policies are outdated, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and because the city now borrows on behalf of Buffalo Public Schools.
Scanlon, whose record-high $110 million capital budget was passed by the council in December, joined the meeting by phone to share his perspective.
“It was stated that this is the way it’s always been done. I think that’s part of the problem – the way things have always been done," he said. "This year with the capital budget we got creative. We couldn’t do things as they’ve always been done because the schools can’t borrow on their own.”
But with neither camp seeming to budge, the courts appear to be the only viable path to resolving the issue.
