Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Buffalo City Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams announced on Tuesday she will appeal a Sept. 24 ruling by a State Supreme Court Justice ordering her to issue bonds for all approved City of Buffalo projects.
The bonds were based on the 2025 Capital Budget and Bond Sale Resolutions adopted by the Buffalo Common Council on Feb. 18, 2025.
"As the City of Buffalo Comptroller, my duty, first and foremost, is to safeguard the city's financial stability, and to ensure that taxpayer dollars are managed responsibly," said Miller-Williams on Tuesday at Buffalo City Hall. "Today, I want to be clear about why I am appealing the recent court decision, and how this moment is about more than a legal ruling. It's about the long-term fiscal health of our city, and setting a precedence to be established for all villages, towns and cities throughout New York State."
Back on Aug. 1 last year, Miller-Williams' office filed the Comptroller's Estimate Report, as required by the City Charter, which established the city's borrowing capacity for Fiscal Year 2024-25 at $28 million. Miller-Williams says all parties, including the Mayor's Office, the Buffalo Public Schools and the Common Council were notified in writing of that decision.
Despite the guidance from Miller-Williams, the administration submitted a $110 million Capital Budget, an amount nearly four times the city's capacity.
"I have consistently and publicly stated that I will not exceed the established debt cap. Fiscal responsibility is not an option. It's a requirement of good government," Miller-Williams stated. "When the court ruled that my office must issue and sell bonds beyond that legal limit, it presented a dilemma that was difficult to accept in good conscience."
Miller-Williams is set to appeal the decision to the Fourth Department of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York in Rochester.
Once the appeal has been filed, a stay or temporary suspension of the Court’s judgment order will take effect unless otherwise directed by the Appellate Court.
"Let me be very clear, this appeal is not about politics or personal disagreements. It's about preserving the integrity of the City Charter, and ensuring independent fiscal oversight for future generations," Miller-Williams stated. "If we compromise these principles today, we put our city's financial stability at risk for tomorrow."
Back on Oct. 7, Miller-Williams had directed her office to issue and sell bonds pursuant to the 2025 Capital Budget and Bond Resolutions adopted by the Buffalo Common Council. While Miller-Williams respected the Judicial Branch of government and acknowledged the directives outlined in the Court’s Memorandum Decision, she said she remained deeply concerned about how that decision will affect the city’s long-term fiscal stability.
When asked about that decision compared to the one on Tuesday, Miller-Williams says those decisions are regarding two different entities: BAN [Bond Anticipation Notes] sales and Capital borrowing.
"The purpose of doing that borrowing [BANs] was to ensure that those projects, which were reimbursable by the state and by the federal government, we did not put any of that funding at risk. What we're focusing on now are those projects that are within the Capital Budget that is business as usual," Miller-Williams explained.
"The city every year goes to market and it borrows, whether it's $28, $26, $25 [million], it's just a pattern that they've done forever. It is now at the point where we have to begin to stop and say, 'Just because it says you can borrow $28 [million, should we keep borrowing $28? Especially when we have dollars that are sitting on the table, projects that haven't even moved out, but it's just become a bad habit that the city has moved forward.'"
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This decision from Miller-Williams has garnered reaction from both Fillmore District Councilman Mitch Nowakowski and Buffalo's Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon. Both strongly feel this appeal from the City Comptroller is "irresponsible" and "negligent".
"We had a very clear decision about the powers of the executive and the Common Council, when it comes to a Capital Budget. We can't have an elected official acting outside of her legal purview to advance an appeal that, ultimately, would spend more taxpayer dollars to defend, and then ultimately leave us into greater injury when we're lining up all these capital budgets that ultimately have to go to bid," said Nowakowski on Tuesday. "At what point do you have to say, 'Are you doing this because of your ego, or are you doing this because you truly believe the city is in peril because of going to Capital Budget?'
"We're right here, we're working every single day. I have not heard from the comptroller, the comptroller is welcome to these chambers all the time. She was a former Council member. It shouldn't be obscure that we ask her to engage with Council members, engage with the mayor, and engage with the Finance Committee. That should not be unorthodox. It really shouldn't."
Mayor Scanlon agrees with Justice Emilio Colaiacovo's decision in court that Miller-Williams' refusal to borrow at this level was a dereliction of her duty.
"We are sitting here a year later, having yet to start any of these projects, and I hear the comptroller talk about her fiscal responsibility to the City of Buffalo and talking about how this is going to impact taxpayers. The way this is impacting taxpayers, I want to be very clear about it, is the millions and tens of millions of dollars that these projects are going to cost, in addition to what they originally would have, if we were able to get them online this year."
Scanlon says projects that were estimated to cost $48 million next year to complete now could cost somewhere upwards of $55 or $60 million. He adds every day that goes by, projects continue to cost more-and-more money.
What Scanlon says frustrates him is how the City Comptroller is refusing to do her job that is mandated by the City of Buffalo Charter.
"It is very, very clear in the City Charter when this situation arises that the comptroller acts in an advisory manner. She advised the Council, she advised myself what she thought about the $110 million spending plan, which does not impact the taxpayers any more than her $28 million cap would have," Scanlon said. "Again, the $82 million in addition to that is reimbursed or covered, the gap covered by the Buffalo Public Schools. And the cost of issuance, I was very clear I would have been willing to remove a project from under that cap, to move that under the $28 million cap of hers. So the $110 million spending plan was not going to impact the taxpayers one bit.
"I've heard the comptroller say before, and I believe she said it again today, 'It does not say in the Charter anywhere, that she must do this, she must do that.' But Justice Colaiacovo told her she must do that. And [she] does not, for one reason or another, want to adhere to his ruling."
Scanlon feels this appeal from Miller-Williams is more to do with ego than anything else.
"The comptroller can set a cap at $28 million, we passed a $110 million spending plan, and she doesn't want to be told what to do. I think that's what's going on here," he said. "I am sitting here dealing with a comptroller who's making arguments that aren't rooted in much sense, quite frankly, being advised by someone [her deputy commissioner] who's the architect of the city's financial problems right now. And it's very frustrating."
So what's next from the City of Buffalo's perspective? Mayor Scanlon says he'll rely on the city's outside counsel once there's an answer to the appeal from the comptroller.
"The comptroller wants to talk about fiscal responsibility now. She wants to drag this court ruling out. It's additional money that will cost the taxpayers of the City of Buffalo, but like I said, that pales in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars in capital projects that it's going to cost the city moving forward," Scanlon said.