By Staff Reporter
Disclosure: Matt Ricchiazzi, the founder and chairman of Change Buffalo PAC, is the publisher of The Buffalo Chronicle. The Chronicle’s newsroom reported and edited this story under its usual standards.
A political action committee founded by Buffalo businessman Matt Ricchiazzi launched a campaign this week urging the governor to help put the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority, the state control board that ran the city’s finances from 2003 to 2012, back in charge.
The campaign, which Change Buffalo PAC calls “Make It Hard Again,” argues that the board’s advisory role is no longer enough for a city that has spent its reserves and its federal pandemic aid. It wants the authority to return to a “control period,” the binding status Buffalo still calls “hard” control.
There is a catch the campaign itself acknowledges. The governor can’t order a control period. Under state law, only the authority’s board can reimpose one, and any action takes at least five favorable votes from its nine directors. What the governor does control is the board itself: the governor appoints seven of the nine directors and designates its chair and vice chair. The mayor and the Erie County executive hold the other two seats.
The campaign arrives two weeks before the Nov. 3 general election, in which Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, faces Republican Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, according to the state Board of Elections’ ballot certification. The PAC’s materials address “the governor” by office and do not name either candidate.
“Buffalo has spent its savings and its federal relief, and now it is asking homeowners to make up the difference,” Mr. Ricchiazzi said in a statement released by the PAC. “We have been here before. From 2003 to 2012 the control board held the line, and Buffalo came out stronger. Nobody wants a control board forever, but the alternative to discipline now is a much harder reckoning later.”
What the campaign is asking for
The PAC asks the governor to do three things: publicly call on the authority to test the city’s finances against the triggers in the law and publish its finding either way; fill any vacant seats on the board and make sure it has a chair and vice chair; and tie any further extraordinary state aid, or new borrowing authority for the board, to a balanced, board-approved four-year plan.
The law gives the board several grounds to act. It may reimpose a control period if it finds a fiscal crisis is imminent, or that the city has failed to adopt a balanced budget or financial plan, missed a debt payment, run an operating deficit of 1% or more in a major fund, lost the ability to certify its access to credit markets, or violated the act. During the advisory period the law also requires the board to “annually consider” those triggers and publish its determination.
In a control period, the board can approve or reject the city’s financial plan, must approve any labor contract before it takes effect, must sign off on city borrowing, and may freeze wages or hiring if it finds that step “essential” to a balanced budget. In today’s advisory period, it may only “comment on” the budget, “review and comment on” borrowing and “assess the impact” of labor contracts, according to the statute. The city must “publicly respond,” but none of it is binding.
The authority’s own leadership is thin. Minutes of its June 17 and July 29 meetings list Frederick Floss, the board’s secretary, as chair pro tempore, and the June roll lists seven directors, counting Mayor Sean Ryan and County Executive Mark Poloncarz, both represented by proxies. The Chronicle has asked the authority whether two gubernatorial seats are vacant and whether a governor-designated chair is in place.
The numbers behind the push
The campaign leans heavily on the state’s own warnings. In a May 8 budget review, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office projected a general fund deficit of about $103 million for 2026-27 and found the mayor’s proposed budget relied on $56.9 million in non-recurring revenue or revenue that “may not materialize.” His office said the city had used $331 million in federal stimulus since 2020-21 to help fund operations.
“Buffalo used up its savings and one-time federal pandemic aid to cover past budget shortfalls, and now that money is gone and there’s no extra cushion left to help balance the proposed 2026-27 budget,” Mr. DiNapoli said.
The Common Council adopted the budget in May on a 5-4 vote, with a 19% increase in the property tax levy, down from the nearly 26% the mayor proposed, Investigative Post reported. In its June analysis of the $675 million adopted budget, the control board said the city had no unassigned fund balance left as of its audited June 30, 2025 results, required a revised four-year financial plan, and noted that an extra $25 million in one-time state aid had closed most of a potential $27.8 million gap. The city’s revised plan, reviewed by the board in July, projects levy increases of 10% next year, then 6% and 5%.
Credit markets have taken notice. In July, S&P and Fitch both lowered the city’s general obligation rating from A+ to A, while Moody’s kept its A1 rating but moved its outlook to negative, citing “ongoing fiscal pressures, declining reserves, and continued reliance on one-time revenues,” according to the city comptroller’s office.
And the control board is about to borrow for the city for the first time since 2007. The mayor has asked the Council to approve a “Declaration of Need,” Item No. 26-000830, that would let the authority sell up to $20.06 million in bonds for emergency repairs at more than 15 city buildings. The Council is expected to vote Oct. 27, WBEN reported. City Comptroller Barbara Miller Williams has asked the administration for a full cost analysis, and noted that the city’s recommended capital budget, due Oct. 7 under the City Charter, had not been filed as of Oct. 9, The Buffalo Criterion reported. (The Chronicle’s editorial page urged the Council on Wednesday to approve the repairs only after the administration shows its math.)
“Any proposed financing must be supported by a documented fiscal need, provide appropriate financial oversight, and protect the City’s long-term financial flexibility,” Ms. Miller Williams said in her letter.
The case against
The idea isn’t new, and it has met resistance at City Hall. In May, Council Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope filed a resolution asking the board to return to hard oversight. “We haven’t been able to right ourselves on our own and we keep relying on the state to help us get out of this,” she told WKBW.
Mr. Ryan, who sits on the control board as an ex officio member, called that resolution “really irresponsible,” pointing to city workers who are still underpaid. “Right now, our plow drivers, our mechanics, our garbage truck drivers, they have yet to catch up, so they are paid less than any municipality in Western New York,” he told Buffalo Toronto Public Media. “I’m not sure why anybody would suggest a hard control board, because all it would lead to is a freezing of the wages of every city worker,” he told WKBW.
The last control period did freeze wages, from 2004 to 2007, saving the city some $150 million, WBFO reported when the board voted 6-1 in 2012 to step back to an advisory role. Even Mr. Floss says the city is still paying for it. “We can now look back and ask, do we have the workforce that we need? Because by not raising wages and paying wages lower than everybody else, well, people don’t wanna come and work for you,” he told WKBW.
The campaign says a freeze is a power the board may use, not an automatic result, since the law requires a finding that it is “essential” and lets unions negotiate certified deferrals instead.
Supporters of the current course also point to progress. Investigative Post described the adopted budget as coming “closer to a balanced budget than the city has seen” since the board gave up its oversight powers, and the control board put the remaining potential gap for this year at $2.8 million, or 0.4% of the budget, after the added state aid.
Warnings without teeth
The board has been sounding alarms for years. “We’ve said for the last few years that there were going to be large budget deficits and that there wouldn’t be unencumbered reserves to cover those deficits,” Mr. Floss told WBEN in March. In the same report, political analyst Ken Kruly noted that because the board is advisory, “they can’t do anything that specifically controls or makes changes in what the city is doing.”
When the board stepped back in 2012, the state comptroller’s office credited “the oversight of a fiscal control board” in part for stabilizing the city’s finances. Its available fund balance had peaked at $113.5 million in 2008.
“This is not about any one person. Every Mayor, Council and Comptroller who comes after this one will inherit either a balanced book or a bigger hole. Stability is the foundation of Buffalo’s revival,” Mr. Ricchiazzi said in the statement.
The control board’s next scheduled meeting is Dec. 2. Its authority, and any control period, expires by law on June 30, 2037.
The Chronicle is seeking comment from Mayor Ryan’s office, the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority, the Office of the State Comptroller and City Comptroller Miller Williams, and will update this story with their responses.
Featured photos, from left: Matt Ricchiazzi, courtesy of Change Buffalo PAC; Gov. Kathy Hochul, by Marc A. Hermann / Metropolitan Transportation Authority, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped; Bruce Blakeman, by Arthur Raslich / Nassau County Photo Archives, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.
Leave a Reply