With the City of Buffalo headed toward steep budget challenges, the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority – known as the Control Board – considered recommending the mayor institute a hiring freeze.
“What would make most sense is that there’s a general hiring freeze, but there needs to be an override, so to speak, built into the freeze, because there’s going to be areas where you absolutely need to hire,” Control Board Executive Director Jeanette M. Robe said at its January meeting. “For example, there’re police and fire classes that need to come on in order to continue providing services. What we’re recommending is to, kind of, halt the hiring while management determines where the needs are, and if there’s not an immediate need, to hold off filling that position.”
But after some discussion, the BFSA backed away from recommending a freeze. One of the reasons was how it might look.
“You know the media is going to jump all over a recommendation like this. Just so you’re aware,” said Andrew A. SanFilippo, a BFSA director and former deputy state comptroller and Buffalo city comptroller.
“That just hits like a ton of bricks,” SanFilippo said.
SanFilippo later said his comments were made within the context of the city’s recently approved Buffalo police contract.
“We were discussing the police contract, and I was more concerned about the 75 vacancies of police officers, and I certainly did not want to put in jeopardy people’s safety,” he told The Buffalo News.
SanFilippo added that a hiring freeze is “a little premature right now,” but a conversation may be appropriate “at some point” at the end of the fiscal year.
Mayor Byron Brown has to submit his 2024-25 operating budget proposal to the Common Council by May 1. He told The News recently that higher snow removal costs could result in a tax increase. And there has been talk about looming budget challenges for the city once its $331 million in…
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