Niagara ReporterThe three complainants who filed charges against former city controller Maria Brown have now also filed them against Corporation counsel Craig Johnson, reliable sources told the Niagara Falls Reporter.
Who are these people?
Why do they attack people in the City Hall of Mayor Paul Dyster who attempt to play by the rules?
In any event, the takeaway is that Johnson will be the next to be removed in the ongoing though so far bloodless purge now taking place at City Hall.
The allegations filed against Brown by the three city employees were dismissed out of hand. Apparently the three, who may have been trying to extort some sort of cash settlement from the city, now have their sights set on Johnson.
But rather than viewing them as the two-bit shake down artists they are, the mayor seems curiously to be embracing them, using their unsupported and unproven allegations to eliminate people of integrity in his administration.
It is not at all unlikely that they will receive some sort of settlement from the city, taxpayer dollars uncontested by the Dyster administration in a tacit “thank you” for helping him eliminate some top officials who know where the bodies are buried.
Brown was ridden over roughshod. A 17-year professional who served as city controller while Dyster was teaching college part time in Washington, D.C., she invariably put the interests of the taxpayers first, and really didn’t care who the mayor happened to be.
Dyster tried to buy her off, adding a $10,000 annual stipend on top of her salary, but Brown was not easily moved. Appalled by Dyster’s out of control spending, she never made any secret of her displeasure.
The mayor’s handling of her dismissal was so egregious, that even his hand picked city Council Chairman Andrew Touma felt compelled to protest.
Touma blasted the administration for how the matter was handled, saying it “became a public spectacle.”
“I’m appalled at the way this came out into the media and the way people took sides,” said Touma. “It’s very rare to see a personnel issue come out in public the way this one did. I’m totally embarrassed by the way this was handled.”
Brown had been facing charges of workplace brutality and hostility, according to Attorney Edward Perlman of Magavern, Magavern and Grimm, who told the Council on June 1 that he represents three employees who have filed charges against Brown and the city.
With Brown now gone, the three malcontents had no one else to release their pent up frustration on. Unfortunately,city attorney Craig Johnson, another professional whose dedication for public service undermines his personal loyalty to Dyster, came quickly into the cross hairs.
Who are these three disgruntled employees? And why is Dyster so quick to act upon their judgments concerning who should and who should not be a city department head in Niagara Falls.
Dyster has gone through most of his nine-year reign without a city engineer. He has no reason whatsoever to doubt he can do the same without a city controller and a city lawyer.
He’s German, after all, and a little German corporal made much of such tactics during the middle period of the past century.
Niagara Falls uber alles, thinks Dyster.
(As an addendum the three compainants are: Janet Carl; Denise Heller Burson; Bara Kolodziej. The claim – which is an attempt to get Johnson disbarred is with the Bar Associatrion claiming that Johnson distributed information improperly: In other words he allowed the accused to learn who her accusers were – Johnson claims – in accordance with city law and the time honored rules of due process. )`
