When asked, Hare said that Erie County provides $11,500 a year of that budget. He added that the CAO sends the county copies of every transaction related to that money. Hare said the county doesn’t have to do an audit; it just needs to check its files. And Bellavia noted the paper made Poloncarz’s contention seem like a big pending investigation.

Bellavia asked Hare about the original allegation by the newspaper that somehow Mayor Byron Brown interceded on Hare’s behalf. This supposedly occurred when the two former board members reduced the number of board members from 18 to nine active so they could gain an easy majority in their scheme to have Hare removed. Hare explained:

“One of the [six] elected officials represented on our board is the mayor’s office. The mayor gets to designate a person to be on the board. So, obviously, if you’re designating someone to be on the board of the CAO, that designee calls you up and says, ‘Mayor, craziness is going on at the CAO, somebody’s trying to fire Nate Hare.’ Of course he would step up and say, ‘What’s going on?’”

“…and try to get his arms around what’s happening. But it’s not because the CAO is ‘owned’ by the mayor – we have five other elected officials that [by law] designate people to the board. We have people who work for private companies, who are represented on the board; we have low-income people who are members of the board.”

“This is just a fallacy and a hoax being perpetrated by these reporters at The Buffalo News,” Hare said.

Hare noted that all documents sent to the newspaper and all letters and op-eds, are posted on the CAO web site, www.caowny.org^[3], along with Hare’s reports to CAO employees.

He also noted that federal and state agencies, as well as outside private accountants, audit the agency each year and representatives of those regulators sit in unannounced on board meetings. Bellavia noted that as CAO’s leader for 17 years, Hare and the CAO have always had audits that provide guidance where needed, but also clean bills of health.