Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has been offered the presidency of Western Regional Off-Track Betting (WROTB) after a unanimous vote by the public benefit corporation’s board of directors Thursday.
Brown, Buffalo’s longest serving mayor, will now enter contract negotiations with the WROTB before officially taking the job. He’ll also need to obtain a gaming license from the New York State Gaming Commission.
The mayor didn’t make an appearance at the board’s announcement, but he confirmed in a statement later Thursday evening that he will remain mayor until he and the WROTB Board of Directors reach a contract deal.
"I appreciate the vote of confidence in me and my record of success as mayor of Buffalo," Brown said. "At this point, a contract still needs to be negotiated before the position is accepted. I look forward to meeting with the Chairman of the Board to start the process toward final approval of a contract."
Brown’s fifth term as mayor doesn’t end until Dec. 31, 2025. His timeline for becoming WROTB president remains unclear, although Elliott Winter, a board member from Niagara County, said they'd like to bring him on "as soon as possible."
Brown and one other candidate from downstate were interviewed by the board in person for about an hour and a half during an executive session, according to Winter. That executive session lasted about five and a half hours in total.
Brown's salary would be determined during contract negotiations.
“He oversees 3,000 employees with a budget of over $600 million,” Winter said of Brown’s qualifications for the WROTB’s top job. “He’s worked in the same capacity for the past 20 years. The City of Buffalo has seen resurgence over the past 20 years with the hotels, the economic development, the restaurants, the entertainment, and we think he could be a valuable asset to our organization."
Winter said he was "not really" concerned about the eight-figure budget deficit facing the City of Buffalo when asked by a reporter. He declined to comment further when pressed.
Let the political maneuvering begin
Brown’s acceptance of the job would scramble city politics. If Brown were to step down, Buffalo Common Council President Chris Scanlon, a close ally of Brown’s who became Common Council president in January, would become acting mayor. And because the State Board of Elections’ Aug. 5 deadline to put any newly vacant seats on November’s ballot has passed, Scanlon would serve out the remainder of Brown’s term.
Scanlon, who became president of the Common Council in January after 12 years as a councilmember, would be unlikely to make any sweeping changes in City Hall. He has often voted in favor of proposals backed by Brown and shown strong support for the Buffalo Police Department and business owners. On Tuesday, Scanlon voted against overriding the mayor’s veto of a resolution to change the city’s budget timeline, even though he’d voted for the proposal initially.
Some political opponents of Scanlon’s, like the organization Our City Action Buffalo, have already lined up to oppose the presumptive acting mayor.
“Chris Scanlon represents the political nepotism of a bygone era and we’re not going back,” Our City Action Buffalo said in a statement minutes after the announcement. “This moment of transition is a hopeful one. It provides us with the opportunity to work towards living up to our moniker as the ‘City of Good Neighbors’ once and for all, for everyone.”
State Sen. Sean Ryan, whose name has been associated with a potential bid for mayor of Buffalo, released a statement minutes after the board announced its decision calling Brown's departure "the beginning of a new era for the City of Buffalo."
"For the first time in nearly two decades, Buffalo will have the chance to address our many challenges with a clean slate and fresh eyes," Ryan said, in part. "The City of Buffalo faces many challenges going forward: a fiscal crisis, a housing shortage, neighborhoods in need of investment, and much more. If we focus on addressing these critical issues, I have no doubt we can overcome all of these challenges and create a brighter future for the people of Buffalo.”
Ryan previously refused to confirm or deny the rumors that he has his eyes on City Hall. His campaign has registered a new fundraising committee for a state-level race, but that money could be transferred to a local committee too.
“I'm very happy representing the folks from Western New York and the 61st Senate District,” Ryan previously told WBFO. “I like what I'm doing, we have a lot of work to get done, and I'm concentrating on representing the people of the 61st Senate District.”
Brown will inherit an organization racked by allegations of corruption
Before the board entered executive session, outgoing WROTB President and CEO Henry Wojtaszek reported that August 2024 was the “best month that we’ve ever had in the history of Batavia Downs here, and not by a little bit,” with income that “continues to project upwards.”
But his account left out a lot about the state of WROTB.
Wojtaszek and two other former WROTB executives made headlines — and attracted the ire of state lawmakers — when they accepted “golden parachute buyouts” collectively worth more than $500,000 of public money.
The board approved those buyouts by a vote of 15-1, according to The Batavia Daily News, with Erie County’s Timothy Callan as the sole “no” vote. The resolution was not available in minutes posted to the WROTB’s website.
Ryan and Assemblymember Monica Wallace have called on the board of directors to rescind the buyouts and, more recently, have asked the New York State Inspector General and Attorney General to investigate the buyouts. The lawmakers allege that the buyouts violate the Severance Pay Limitation Act, which limits severance packages for at-will employees at public-benefit corporations — like Wojtaszek, one of the highest paid public employees in the state — to a quarter of their annual salary. The act was passed in 2019 after similar buyouts at the Erie County Water Authority.
"It is my hope that he [Brown] will commit to cleaning up the culture of corruption that has defined our local OTB for many years now," Ryan said in a statement. "He can start by calling for the board to rescind the illegal golden parachutes approved earlier this year."
In her own statement, Wallace reiterated her calls for an investigation, saying the "illegal" severance packages were the result of "a culture of wasteful spending at best and possible corruption at worst."
Western Regional OTB operates Batavia Downs and betting parlors across 15 New York counties, including all eight counties in Western New York. The profits from those operations are meant to be given to municipal and county governments in the region. The buyouts exceed the entire revenue share provided to 12 of the WROTB’s 15 counties in 2022, according to Ryan and Wallace.
WROTB has been dogged by other accusations of impropriety in recent years. A pair of 2021 audits from the New York State Comptroller’s Office found that “lax oversight of operations by the board of directors.”
According to the findings of one of the audits, OTB board members and employees used sports tickets and concessions collectively worth “at least” $121,000 on themselves between September 2017 and December 2019. The tickets and concessions were supposed to be used for marketing and promotional materials meant to draw in clientele.
Brown has reportedly auditioned for other jobs outside City Hall
Months of reports had suggested that Brown was seeking the public benefit corporation’s top job — but he’s reportedly gone after other high-profile positions, too.
Brown’s name has cropped up as a rumored candidate for other jobs, namely for the presidency of Buffalo State University. He told WKBW in the fall of 2023 that he had “discussed” the possibility of becoming Buffalo State’s president but added that “my focus is on being mayor of the City of Buffalo.”
It’s unclear whether Brown was being considered for the position and, if so, how far into the interview process he made it because the university’s Presidential Search Committee did not release a list of semi-finalists. Linda Dobmeier, the chair of the search committee, said in a statement last October that that decision was approved by SUNY and done “to protect the professionals we are engaging.”
Glenn Chance, a provost at the University of Houston-Victoria, was selected as university president last December. But the committee announced in March that they would be rescinding that appointment and that Bonita Durand would serve as interim president through the 2025-26 academic year. Weeks before that announcement, The Victoria Advocate reported that the University of Houston-Victoria Faculty Council unanimously voted to replace Chance with an interim provost due to conflict of interest concerns, although the Presidential Search Committee offered no explanation for its decision.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comment from Monica Wallace and Byron Brown.