Former Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown made it official this week, accepting a $295,000-a-year salary to assume the top job at the embattled Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp.
Brown’s tenure is already off to a shaky start, although he can’t be blamed as he has yet to walk through the door at Batavia Downs for his first day on the job as the public benefit corporation’s new president and CEO.
No, the real culprits here are the same that have been called into question so many times in the recent past and that’s the directors who oversee the board that actually runs the organization.
While the board approved a contract with Brown to replace outgoing CEO and President Henry Wojtaszek five days ago it has yet to actually release the contents of the contract publicly.
In reality, the deal should have been made available upon request to any member of the press or the public on the day it was authorized.
It is a public document and it contains not only the salary for the job but also all the perks, which Buffalo’s Investigative Post reported will include a travel allowance of $800 per month for Brown who will continue to live in Buffalo while commuting to WROTB headquarters at Batavia Downs in Genesee County. IP also reported that Brown will get an additional $1,000 per month for foregoing health insurance benefits from the organization.
The point is this deal — all of it — will be funded with public money, as will the $299,000 contractual buyout Wojtaszek is getting when he leaves.
We can’t say this enough: WROTB is not a private casino or resort. It is a public agency that is required, by law, to adhere to the law but one that should also adhere to the highest standards of transparency and open government.
As we have reported numerous times in recent years, WROTB officials from Wojtaszek on down have often failed to be fully forthcoming on matters related to the allocation of the corporation’s public resources.
Nobody knew, for example, that the board authorized lucrative contracts last July for Wojtaszek and 17 other top agency executives.
As has been the case with Brown, the agency did not make the details of those agreements available until the newspaper filed a formal Freedom of Information Law request to pry them out into the public.
This is not good practice and it denies the public — residents, taxpayers and voters — the right to know how their money is being spent.
Like state Assemblywoman Monica Wallace and state Sen. Sean Ryan — a pair of Democrats who have stood above the fray in being vocal in their criticism of these six-figure sweetheart deals for Wojtaszek and the other — we continue to question the board’s decision-making and its apparent total lack of understanding of just how egregious these contracts and salaries are to the average Western New Yorker, the very people they were appointed to serve.
But we’re also alarmed by the continued operation of WROTB as a secretive empire, a place where costly deals get done in secret and nobody seems to be able to share any information about them until well after they are signed, sealed and delivered.
This despite the organization fending off scathing audits from the state comptroller’s office and an ongoing federal investigation into its dubious practices of the past.
We believe the public deserves better, much better.
While Brown is being lauded as a new face who is ready to usher in a fresh era of operations at WROTB, the board’s failure to provide the details on his $295,000-per-year job proves, once again, that the corporation is more interested in doing business in secret than it is in doing the people’s business in an above board and transparent way.