It was a major announcement by Sabres owner and Rochester businessman Tom Golisano. He put 5 million dollars of his own money into a fund to support candidates for the New York State legislature. It's called a multi-candidate unauthorized independent committee. "It's pretty straight forward. We want a responsible state budget. We want responsible process for coming up with a state budget and we want to remember we have to keep our expenses under control because our economy is not growing as fast as the budget is." said Golisano on Tuesday of last week.

But now Erie County board of elections commissioner Dennis Ward is crying foul, saying that Golisano's committee could be breaking the law. According to election rules, when a committee hands out a lot of campaign money, it's not allowed to meet with the candidate and talk about the campaign.

Ward says that Golisano has already met with candidates like Baby Joe Mesi, who happens to be running against Ward's wife, Erie County legislator Michelle Ianello, in the democratic state senate primary. Mesi was supported by Steve Pidgeon, the man now running Golisano's new committee and handing out all the money. "How does the candidate not cooperate or foster if your sitting and discussing the campaign with Mr. Golisano, or Mr. Pidgeon, or Mr. Parenti that they will not cooperate and use the money. What do you just sit and talk about the weather?", said Ward.

"Dennis Ward is probably the biggest whiner and cryer in Western New york Politics and is wrong again." replied Pidgeon. He doesn't deny knowing Mesi, but says it doesn't matter what happened in the past because the committee didn't exist when he was working with Mesi. Pidgeon claims so far no decision have been made about where the money is going. "It's a matter of coordination going forward, going on in the future. He hasn't made any designations yet. He doesn't need to make designations." said Pidgeon.

Still political analyst Bob Davis says this is a real issue that may eventually end up decided by the courts. "I think the state election law is set up to prevent things like this from happening. I think somebody needs to challenge it." said Davis.