A new drive began Monday to grant the Erie County jail superintendent a 10 percent raise, as lawmakers also quizzed the county attorney on the Holding Center's worrisome suicide rate.

LOCKPORT -- A city man who spent several months on the lam in Indiana, until police tracked him through his Facebook page online, was in jail in Lockport Monday night and will be arraigned this afternoon in City Court.

Regent Communications Inc., owner of four FM stations in Buffalo, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday and has entered a restructuring agreement.

The mother and half-brother of a disabled woman found dead last month have pleaded not guilty to charges that they abused and 51-year-old Eva Cummings and 31-year-old Luke Wright are accused of sexually assaulting and suffocating 23-year-old Laura Cummings in their North Collins home.  Eva Cummings faces a second-degree murder count, while Wright faces charges of rape, criminal sexual acts and incest; 15 charges in all between the two.  Wright and Cummings were both remanded to jail without bail.

A Grand Island man faces charges that he choked his girlfriend over the weekend.  32-year-old Garrat Olson was charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and menacing after officers responded to a domestic disturbance call Sunday night.  The alleged incident happened at a Carl Road home.

Image via Wikipedia

Harold E. Ford, Jr. now says he will not pursue a seat in the U.S. Senate.  His decision will likely leave incumbent Senator Kirsten Gillibrand without a serious primary challenge in her bid for the Democratic nomination.  In a “New York Times” op-ed posted online Monday night, Ford wrote that he wished to avoid, quote, “a brutal and highly negative Democratic primary -where the winner emerges weakened and the Republican strengthened.” Kelli Conlin, with NARAL Pro-Choice New York, says Ford would have faced heavy criticism for his previous conservative stances on social issues, like gay marriage and abortion.
The Amherst Town Board voted last night to set June 15th as the date residents will vote on downsizing the board from seven to five members by the year 2014.  The June date had been proposed by Supervisor Barry Weinstein so that the issue could be decided before anyone runs for the council seat left vacant when Weinstein was elected supervisor.

Cheektowaga’s Town Board has given the green light to borrowing 15 and a half million dollars to start renovating the police and courts building.  The work which will include a new 28-thousand square foot court, and renovations which would eventually allow the police department to use the entire existing space for offices and jail.

Buffalo and Niagara Falls Police Athletic League after-chool programs will be receiving a financial shot in the arm.  Congresswoman  Louise Slaughter announced that the programs will each get 100-thousand dollars in federal funding.  In Buffalo, the money will be used for programs for at-risk youth at seven community centers.

Governor Paterson yesterday reiterated that he has no plans to leave office before his current term is up.  But some state lawmakers are urging the politically-weakened Paterson to resign and allow Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch to take the helm of state government. Paterson has asked for an investigation from state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo about the David Johnson case.  Plus, the state faces a current eight-point-two-billion-dollar deficit, which the Governor says will only get bigger. Paterson has not held any budget talks with legislative leaders in recent weeks.

The woman who ran a call girl operation which took down Eliot Spitzer now says she wants to call the shots in Albany.  Kristin Davis has announced her campaign for governor.  Her platform is called “P”-squared and aims to legalize pot and prostitution. Davis insists this is not a hoax, joke or publicity stunt.  Davis touts a degree in business and a decade as a VP of a hedge fund, not to mention running a multi-million-dollar international call girl operation.  She says that makes her more qualified than most politicians.  She realizes winning is a long shot but hopes to get at least 50-thousand votes.

A two-week break from the Sabres was awesome; would you like to know why? Because it meant I got to go two weeks without being inundated with the following comments (see if you can add your own):

- Tom Golisano is cheap!
- Tom Golisano doesn’t care!
- Larry Quinn isn’t a “hockey man”!
- Darcy Regier is an idiot!
- Darcy Regier never makes trades!
- Computers do the Sabres scouting!
- Lindy Ruff is overrated!
- Lindy has lost the room!
- Fire Lindy!
- The team is soft!
- The team has no heart!

My God, how did it come to this? The Sabres are mired in last place, probably likely to end up picking in the top-three, and there is no hope for the future in sight. Of course, that’s not true, but you would think it is by the way people carry on about this team.

Buffalo is now abuzz about the upcoming trade deadline, and the general consensus is that Darcy Regier is unlikely to make a move of any significance. I tend to agree with that, but the idea that Regier doesn’t do deadline deals is a little crazy considering that since he became GM he has made a deal of some sort almost every year at the deadline. Sure, some of them have been when he was selling and not buying, and some were insignificant, but there’s no doubt he makes deals. Here’s who was acquired each year:

1998 – Geoff Sanderson, Paul Kruse, Jason Holland
1999 – Stu Barnes, Joe Juneau, Rhett Warrener
2000 – Chris Gratton, Doug Gilmour, JP Dumont
2001 – Donald Audette, Steve Heinz
2002 –
2003 – Daniel Briere (Sabres were sellers that year)
2004 – Jeff Jillson, Mike Grier, Brad Brown
2005 – Lockout
2006 –
2007 – Danius Zubrus, Ty Conklin
2008 – Steve Bernier
2009 – Mikael Tellqvist, Dominic Moore

Here’s what he has never done at the deadline: blow up the team. In fact, he’s never taken that approach because it’s just not his style, and I fail to see the wisdom of such drastic measures at the trade deadline.

We’ll see what happens today and tomorrow. I expect some piece will be added here or there, but nothing major. Why? Because that’s HOW Darcy works.

The University at Buffalo's 2010 football schedule was released Monday. It includes trips to Baylor and Connecticut, two of the six opponents that advanced to bowl games in 2009.

I have my biases just like anyone else.

Add to that the fact that I’m somewhat vindictive and not particularly forgiving and, frankly, it makes me the type of person whose bad side you don’t want to get on. And if you are on my **** list and you fall? Well, I’m not going to feel guilty about enjoying it.

I’m not saying this as a threat. It is merely a disclaimer. Usually you get those at the end in small print, but I like to put mine out front.

I was never a fan of David Paterson. I’m not afraid to call him “the accidental governor.” I mean, let’s be honest here. If Eliot Spitzer were a combination of more discreet and less freaky, we still wouldn’t know anything about David Paterson. And we’d all be just fine with that, I’m sure.

When Paterson assumed the role of governor, he had a radio tour to introduce himself. I was working for WECK and WLVL at the time and got the same email every other talk show host in the state got; announcing that the new governor might consider being a guest on my show to tell the taxpayers what he was all about.

I called the number on the email, hoping to set up a live interview with the governor, the third we’d had since I had started my talk show several years ago – but the first who had offered to do a live interview. Or at least, I thought that’s what the offer was.

I wish I could recall the conversation verbatim, but I cannot. I do remember whoever I talked to telling me that Cheektowaga and Lockport were not important enough to warrant the new executive’s time. The woman on the other end of the phone didn’t seem to care that radio waves were capable of traveling and just because the stations were licensed to Cheektowaga and Buffalo didn’t mean that only residents of those communities would hear it.

“Yeah, we’re licensed to Cheektowaga,” I told her, “but the majority of our listeners are actually from Buffalo, the second largest city in the state. You may have heard of it?”

The preceding paragraph is paraphrased, but that was the gist.

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t buying it. And just as quickly as David Paterson had become governor, I was done with him. Frankly, if his media people were that clueless, I could only imagine how bad he must be.

He didn’t disappoint. He struck me as equal to his aide in terms of cluelessness. Honestly, I’ve been thinking for days of something he did that impressed me or gave me any sort of notion that he may have been more intelligent than I gave him credit for. I came up empty.

The thing that has frustrated me most about Governor Paterson has been his constant insistence that he was “making the tough decisions” by deciding to raise taxes. I’ve never gotten the impression that any politician ever has lost sleep over deciding to raise taxes.

Now, deciding not to run for a full term as governor cause your administration is plagued with scandal? I’m thinking that might have caused “the accidental governor” to lose a few winks.

So it’s been decided that this partial term will be his last. Good for us. I would have to say to the governor, though, “Why wait? I mean, really. Just go now. You haven’t accomplished anything yet. And now that you’re a lame duck, you’re not going to.”

In short, allow me to add myself to what is surely going to be a long line of journalists who suggest to to governor that he should do us all a favor and resign.

If that seems vindictive to you, it’s because it is. Not that it matters. He won’t care about my opinion. I’m not from a big enough city.

A chimney fire spread to the rest of a Town of Hartland home early this morning, causing an estimated $50,000 damage and routing 10 people from the residence, Niagara County sheriff's officials reported.

We know our pizza in Western New York, and Don Barton and his partner "Shrew" aim to get to know it better, endeavoring to eat their way through the 701 Buffalo area telephone book listings of pizza parlors in the 716.

Amherst residents will vote in three months on whether to downsize their Town Board.

The multibillion dollar branding experiment in Vancouver is not being met with much enthusiasm by many of the people that actually have to live there. The world is treated with gorgeous scenery and two weeks of Canada porn, while the residents are left with high unemployment and homeless rates, violent drug gang turf wars and a olympic size pile of debt.

Could Olympics Undo the Global Economy? While the tab for the Vancouver games will not be fully known until long after the world departs, the city has already seen it’s credit rating downgraded when it was forced to step in and bankroll the $1.2 billion Olympic Village, now $250 million over budget.

Other cost overruns such as security and delivering snow by helicopter to Cypress Mountain will add to the hangover. Creditors threatening to foreclose on the Whistler Blackcomb Olympic ski venue in the middle of the games further demonstrates how far the world has shifted since the hey day of bottomless budgets.

Vancouver’s Olympic Bet The province’s unemployment hovers just above 8 percent—slightly below Canada’s 8.3 percent rate. Vancouver’s unemployment rate is just below 8 percent, but double that of January 2008. A year ago, Canadian credit-rating agency DBRS downgraded Vancouver’s debt rating after the city was forced to buy out a U.S. hedge fund financing the Olympic Village. Columnist for The Vancouver Sun Vaughn Palmer forecasts the Games will cost the City $8 billion, far higher than the $1.42 billion price tag announced by Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC). Demonstrators, angered by city spending on the Games, demanded housing for Vancouver’s homeless as the Olympics got underway. Coverage of organized crime has also cast a shadow over Olympic celebrations in the lead-up to the Games. Canadian authorities say Mexico’s crackdown has slowed drug flows north to Vancouver, cutting into drug-gangs’ profit margins and sparking violent turf wars.

Olympics Protest in Vancouver: SLIDESHOW Protestors lined the streets in Vancouver today, disrupting the path of the Olympic torch and forcing it to reroute.

Commentary | Olympics The Olympics have blown a $6-billion hole in the public purse, but Gateway is set to blow an even bigger hole in B.C.’s finances. The proposed South Fraser freeway alone could take $2 billion away from transit, energy efficiency, housing, education, health care, arts funding, and other public priorities. Only minor preparatory work has been done on this unnecessary and environmentally disastrous project; it is not a done deal. Many freeway projects have been stopped after construction started—all it takes is public opposition and a financial crunch. The Georgia Viaduct was originally planned as a four-mile long freeway through Chinatown and East Vancouver, but public opposition and a budget squeeze left only an orphaned section now potentially slated for demolition.

Vancouver’s pre-Olympics woes just part of putting on the games: experts The biggest issue, perhaps, has been the ballooning operating budget, currently sitting at an estimated $1.76-billion, plus another $900-million for 15,000 security personnel. Those costs could rise based on any number of factors that could play out over the two-week Games, with some expecting a final tab of $6 billion.

Critics say that money could be better spend on social issues, including money for Vancouver’s homeless — many living in the city’s drug-plagued Downtown Eastside — or the province’s native populations and recession-hit industries, such as fishing and forestry, and question whether the costs incurred to put on the Olympic Games are worth it. (Montreal, for example, took 30 years to pay off the debt it accrued during the 1976 Games.)

Protesters set up tent city in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Hundreds of homeless and poverty protesters using the Olympic spotlight to their advantage flooded into a large vacant lot in the 100-block West Hastings Street on Monday and erected a tent city.

Maybe Marc Goldman has a better plan for Branding Buffalo: for ten years forget about what the rest of the word thinks of Buffalo and focus on making things work for the residents of this area. Happy residents are the best brand of all. The Buffalopundit blogs a lot on this theme.

Coming off a pair of 1,100-yard plus rushing seasons and a Mid-American Conference championship, University at Buffalo running back James Starks was primed for a banner senior season in 2009. The N...