Last month, The Spectrum reported on $2,560 in illegal campaign donations from UB to Erie County Executive Chris Collins' re-election campaign.
UB officials said that The Center for Industrial Effectiveness (TCIE, a part of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) made the donation.
"In order to develop clients for our services, we are always networking in the community," said TCIE Executive Director Timothy Leyh in an email last month. "My staff and I attend as many events as possible where we can make contacts and inform people about what we offer. Last spring, I bought tickets for a breakfast event, and a dinner, which I now realize were fundraisers for the Collins campaign.
"At that time, I didn't realize that our purchase would be regarded as a campaign contribution," Leyh continued. "That was not my intent – I just wanted to attend the event so that we could do our usual networking. It was an honest mistake and one that I take responsibility for."
Numerous UB officials, including some at TCIE and others who have direct connections to TCIE, declined to reveal to The Spectrum the names or dates of the "breakfast" and "dinner" events or the staff members who attended them.
On Tuesday, in response to a Nov. 1 Freedom of Information Law request from The Spectrum, UB Records Access Officer Brian T. Hines said in an email that the university has no documents that show the names and dates of the breakfast and dinner events, no documents that show the names of the staff members who attended, no documents that show transactions that in any other way resulted in the $2,560 in donations, and no documents that indicate that Collins' campaign returned the money, as both a Collins official and UB officials claimed.
Collins, a Republican, lost his re-election bid to Democratic challenger Mark Poloncarz at the beginning of the month.
Email: news@ubspectrum.com
