Embattled Buffalo housing commissioner rejects suspension

Joseph Mascia says he isn’t going anywhere.

The embattled Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority commissioner and Fillmore District Common Council candidate told City & State on Wednesday that he has no intention of stepping down from his BMHA post or ending his campaign despite the suspension of his commissionership by the order of Mayor Byron Brown.

“I’m still doing what I do,” Mascia said. “My duties are to respond to residents’ needs.”

Mascia - one of two elected resident commissioners on the seven-person board - asserted that Brown can only remove the commissioners he has appointed. Mascia also said he has retained an attorney, whom he declined to name.

“We’re going to challenge the authority of the mayor to actually either have me suspended or removed as commissioner,” Mascia said. “I’m an elected official, a public official. He doesn’t have the power to remove me.”

Mascia’s suspension is a response to a recording of a racist diatribe in which he used the N-word to describe Brown, BMHA Executive Director Dawn Sanders-Garrett, Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes and a number of other local African American civic leaders. The Buffalo News first reported on the recording in July.

A letter from Brown was delivered to Mascia’s home in the Marine Drive housing complex last Wednesday, the night before the board’s monthly meeting. In the letter, Brown said that Mascia was suspended from the board until the conclusion of a hearing scheduled for this fall to determine whether he will be removed.

Brown, the BMHA board and a host of other politicians and leaders have called on Mascia to resign.

Frank Messiah, the NAACP Buffalo branch president, said in a letter to the housing authority sent earlier this month that his organization “strongly urges the BMHA Board of Commissioners to pursue every avenue to remove Joe Mascia from having any type of managerial position with BMHA.”

Mascia has since apologized for using racist language to describe African-American leaders and has continued to push on with his bid to unseat the Fillmore District’s longtime Common Council member David Franczyk.

Mascia has been a constant thorn in the side of the BMHA administration, also appointed by Brown, since being elected in 2006 and claims that the recording and its subsequent release are all part of an effort to silence him.

The recording, taken in March, was released in mid-July, just as Mascia was ramping up his Common Council campaign.

And this suspension, too, comes at a curious time, he said, as he has a primary that is fast approaching.

“Our feeling is that this is just a diversion and an attempt by the administration to influence the outcome of the coming primary,” Mascia said. “Absolutely, that’s exactly what’s happening.”

Brown and Sanders-Garrett did not immediately return calls seeking comment.