Embattled Buffalo housing authority keeping its finances secret
The Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority may be struggling with its finances, but the taxpayer-funded entity is not sharing any details.
City & State has requested details on how much cash BMHA has on hand, how many people are on the waiting list for public housing and details on recent personnel moves, but the authority has failed to provide any information. The first records request was submitted in April.
The beleaguered authority, which faces the possibility of being placed in receivership by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, did respond to one Freedom of Information Law request submitted in late April after several phone calls and an in-person conversation, but only with a letter acknowledging that the request had been received.
That May 5 letter said the authority would issue a determination within 20 business days on the FOIL request, which seeks to find out the number of people on waiting lists for public housing and copies of emails between the housing authority and HUD officials.
City & State sent an additional FOIL request on Aug. 7 requesting a balance sheet with the authority’s current cash holdings and debt obligations as well as documentation of any personnel moves made in the previous six months.
Despite numerous phone calls and emails placed to BMHA Counsel David Rodriguez and Executive Director Dawn Sanders-Garrett, no official response has come.
Approached about the status of the requests after a BMHA board meeting last week, Rodriguez told City & State that he would “look into it” and get back, then disappeared behind a locked door and into the administrative offices at the authority’s administrative building. City & State has since continued to call and email Rodriguez, but has yet to receive any response.
During the board meeting last week, Sanders-Garrett briefly discussed an ongoing “realignment” of departments within the authority. She offered no details about how many employees or which positions would be moved around, but did confirm that some employees would be moved from central administrative roles and placed back at the asset management project level, the units that manage individual housing projects. Additionally, she said Rodriguez is taking on the responsibilities of the positions that will be left vacant, as City & State reported earlier this month.
The move will allow the authority to cut the salaries of those employees accordingly, saving the authority money.
“In order to stay within the context of our budget and to service our residents more effectively, the push is to allow staff to be at the AMP level so that they can respond to resident concerns,” Sanders-Garrett said. “Mr. Rodriguez will oversee the operations.”
She declined to provide a list of the administrative jobs that would be left vacant as a result of the moves.
Rumors have been swirling in recent months that the agency has little or no cash reserves.
After the meeting, Sanders-Garrett said she was unable to tell City & State how much money remains in the authority’s account. She said that the fiscal year concluded at the end of June and that figures would not be available until 2016, but denied that funds had been completely depleted.
“We probably won’t talk about the reserves until next year," she said, "because until the year is ended, that’s when you find out how much reserves that you have.”