By Wad Rotson

Brian Reilly has so many jobs at City Hall he can barely name them all.

Reilly's economic stimulus plan in action.

He’s the czar of Buffalo’s economic development, where he has made one of his top priorities the eradication of Fillmore Avenue between Main Street and the Broadway Market .

He’s also in charge of the City’s permit system, where he enjoys reading “the hundreds of thank you notes I get each week from citizens who appreciate my efforts to keep James The Ice Cream Guy from turning our neighborhoods and parks into a menacing Main Place Mall on wheels.”

And to top it off, Reilly is in charge of the City’s meticulous inspection department, ensuring that nearly every home on Buffalo’s East Side is emblazoned with an enormous, hand-painted red square to indicate that the gas has been shut off.  “I guess you could say I am the father of a modern-art movement that began right here in Buffalo’s poorest neighborhoods,” said a proud Reilly.

In fact, Reilly has proved so savvy in his ability to simultaneously discourage economic development and increase poverty in Buffalo that President Barack Obama has reportedly asked him to oversee the nation’s thorny new Healthcare Initiative.

But Reilly isn’t interested in any awards for the tireless work that he has done on behalf of ignoring the City’s poor.  Nor does he want to work for the federal government.  “I didn’t even return Obama’s calls,” said Reilly.  “I’m too busy looking for ways to fund the grand re-opening of One Sunset.”

All Reilly really wants is to be “left alone to do my job.  Which is, first, to save the City of Buffalo from having too many middle class families living in the Elmwood Village and, second, to fearlessly protect the entire city from the looming danger of explosive, out-of-control economic growth.”

And now that his girlfriend is safely covered by an expensive insurance policy paid for by the City of Buffalo, Reilly can finally focus more on his jobs at hand.  “It turns out that the hefty additional cost of the insurance rider was covered at no cost to the taxpayers,” said Reilly, who explained that City finance managers simply diverted funds that had been earmarked to irrigate dying trees in the medians on Main Street in order to cover his controversial “Domestic Partner” insurance benefits.

Proclaimed a beaming Reilly, a can of red spray paint in hand,  “Now I can focus more on drawing beautiful gas shut-off squares, promoting my underlings to their highest levels of incompetence and limiting poverty in Buffalo by requisitioning and distributing dozens of brand new 3G iPhones.”

Economic Czar Sought Cheap Labor To Offset Expanding Healthcare, Retirement Costs

By Ronn Chesmonde

In a shocking investigative report that you’ll read only in The Buffalo Ruse, City of Buffalo economic development officials used federal grant money intended for the prevention of poverty to purchase 120 enslaved teenage “relief workers” from Kazakhstan.

Kazakh slaves arrive in Depew.

“On paper this seemed like a good idea,” said Brian Reilly, Buffalo’s czar of Economic Development.  “Obviously, it turns out not to have been so great once the plan was put into action.”

Looking to improve efficiency in all levels of city government, Reilly bought the enslaved Kazakhs by placing what turned out to be the winning bid for their services on the website www.cheaplabor.org.

In a pilot program that Reilly designed, the majority of the displaced teenagers were to be deployed as affordable replacements for Buffalo’s worst public school teachers, its aging NFTA bus drivers and the city’s least competent police and fire officials.

“No health care costs, no pensions and, thanks to all of the vacant property on the East Side, extremely low overhead in terms of housing the slaves,” said Reilly.  “I thought I had found the panacea to all of Buffalo’s ills.”

What Reilly found, however, was much more than he bargained for.

“I don’t care what line of work you’re in: you take 120 teenagers from Eastern Europe who have been entered into a life of servitude and try to tell them what their expected duties will be after they’ve arrived in Buffalo…I’ll just say that not all of them were thrilled to be here,” said Reilly, who lamented the fact that raising children of his own did not adequately prepare him for the hostility he faced when he met the slaves at the Amtrak station in Depew last Friday.

“I think we were close to making this work,” said Reilly.  “It all came down to a few bad apples who ruined it for the majority of the slaves who were excited to see how far Buffalo has come with its waterfront development,” said Reilly.

Mayor Byron Brown was quick to point out that the enslaved workers were not “chained, beaten or coerced physically” before being brought to Buffalo.  “Make no mistake,” said the Mayor.  “The modern slave trade is much more humane than the legacy of inhuman suffering that permeated the pre-Civil War era of the United States.”

Mayor Brown admitted that he freed the Kazakhs “immediately after being contacted by officials in the Justice Department who informed me that slavery is not a permissible use of the anti-poverty funds generated by the federal government.”

The Kazakh teenagers have been placed in the custody of the Erie County Department of Social Services and have each been assigned a legal guardian, deluxe accommodations at the Mansion on Delaware and unlimited use of mid-size Chevrolets, courtesy of Billy Fucillo.