Today, the City of Buffalo, New York released (in print version) its annual Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. The results in the report were covered in an article in The Buffalo News titled “Buffalo closes last year in the black, expects casino funds to start rolling in.”
The article, written by Deidre Williams, included:
“The City of Buffalo closed out its 2018-2019 fiscal year with a $948,715 surplus, as expected …”
“The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and the independent auditor’s report also showed the city’s reserves were $92.9 million as of June 30, 2019, an increase of $900,000 from the previous year.”
“The Brown administration said anything beyond the $11 million will be used to ‘replenish the fund balance.’ That comes amid warning signs about the city's repeated draw on reserves year after year to balance budgets.”
The City of Buffalo distributed print versions of the annual report locally. We look forward to the full report when it is available, likely tomorrow. We will take a closer look at those three claims above, as a test case in on-the-fly interpretation of these annual, audited reports.
Did the city really have a surplus? The Buffalo News article is interesting in what it didn’t include, as well as what it chose to emphasize.