Jim Heaney

Jim Heaney is editor and executive director of Investigative Post. He was an investigative reporter with The Buffalo News from 1986 to 2011 and a reporter and editor with The Orlando Sentinel from 1980-86. His coverage over the years has focused on economic development, local and state government, politics, education, housing and transportation, and he was an early practitioner of computer-assisted reporting. Heaney has won more than 20 journalism awards and was a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Jul 24

2014

Battle is joined on Buffalo school reform

Jim Heaney, in his latest column for City & State, provides his take on the reform agenda being advanced by the new majority on the Board of Education. Heaney, who formerly covered Buffalo schools in the 1990s when he was a reporter for The Buffalo News, said he’s struck by the majority’s top priority: contract changes that would enable the district to assign the best teachers to the worst performing schools. He wrote: In Buffalo, as in many districts, that’s a challenge, because of seniority clauses in labor contracts. As a result, veteran teachers gravitate to the better schools, while[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 14

2014

Huge price tag for fixing Buffalo’s buildings

By Jim Heaney and Pamela Cyran The bill is about to become due for City Hall’s chronic failure to maintain and update many of the 240 buildings and 2,180 acres of parks it owns. Consultants two years ago gave Mayor Byron Brown’s administration a preliminary estimate of $607 million to bring those buildings and parks up to snuff over the coming decade, and said that $253 million of that work ought to get done right away. The bill for leaky roofs alone stretched into eight figures. Administration officials have kept the estimates under wraps, insisting they are too high. They[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 10

2014

Buffalo’s costly neglect of public buildings

A draft report shows city owned buildings and parkland require up to $607 million in repairs and updates over the next decade, Jim Heaney and Pamela Cyran of Investigative Post report for WGRZ. City Hall alone would cost up to $180 million to bring up to snuff, the draft report said. Costly work is required for community centers, libraries, museums and other cultural centers, and park, police and fire facilities. City officials said they have not released the two-year-old report, obtained from sources by Investigative Post, because they believe the cost estimates are high. They are scheduled to meet Friday[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jun 18

2014

Solar jobs, entrepreneur headed to Buffalo

SolarCity is buying Silevo, which last fall announced plans to bring 475 jobs to the city under the Buffalo Billion Program. SolarCity is a much bigger operator and has plans to increase the planned manufacturing plant’s capacity five-fold, which would make it among the largest such facilities in the nation. More jobs are also anticipated, a total of anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500. Beyond the jobs, SolarCity brings noted entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose ventures have included PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Will the larger manufacturing capacity necessitate the state upping its $225 million investment to build and equip the clean energy[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jun 18

2014

Buffalo recovery a Tale of Two Cities

Jim Heaney makes his debut as a columnist for City & State this week with a piece that puts Buffalo’s improved economy in perspective. Heaney notes a great and growing divide between “the haves and have-nots.” Yes, there is the psychological boost thanks to the Buffalo Billion initiative, and construction cranes denote progress at Canalside and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. But other aspects of the economy lag. “Any way you cut the numbers—poverty rate, unemployment rate, actual number of city residents working—they lag behind where things stood prior to the Great Recession of 2008–09,” Heaney writes. Meanwhile, the public[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jun 18

2014

Heaney assesses SolarCity deal

Investigative Post editor Jim Heaney discusses the SolarCity deal, and the thinking behind the Buffalo Billion initiative, with WGRZ’s Danny Spewak in a 6 minute, 42 second interview taped Tuesday evening.

Posted 10 years ago

May 16

2014

IDA chairman won’t discuss resignation

Chris Johnston, chairman of the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, has dug in his heels in the face of questions regarding his suspension and resignation from his private sector job. Johnston rejected a request from John Mills, chairman of the Erie County Legislature, to appear Wednesday before the Government Affairs Committee to answer questions about his departure last month from the World Trade Center of Buffalo Niagara. Johnston was suspended in late March in the midst of an internal review of trade center finances. He resigned in early April. Johnston told Mills in a letter that he would only answer[...]

Posted 10 years ago

May 12

2014

Maziarz, Gallivan spending questioned

Do state lawmakers pocket campaign contributions for personal use? The Moreland Commission, charged with investigating corruption in state government, was asking that question before Gov. Andrew Cuomo disbanded the panel in March. A couple dozen state legislators were on the commission’s radar screen because their campaign finance disclosure reports didn’t document some expenses or failed to itemize their spending to detail precisely what they spend their money on. Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, topped the commission’s list, with about $140,000 in unitemized spending over a six-year period, according to a report published today by City & State, a magazine and website that[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jim Heaney

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