Categories for In-Depth

Jan 17

2022

The hidden costs of housing the Bills

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There was a time when Erie County made money from Buffalo Bills games in Orchard Park.  From the opening of the football stadium in 1973 through 1997, the county collected millions of dollars from parking, concessions and the sale of stadium naming rights. No more.  Erie County in 1998 made major concessions that gave all the revenue from parking, concessions and naming rights to the Bills.  The county and New York State also agreed to take on a host of expenses previously covered by the Bills, ranging from stadium maintenance to the cost of ushers and ticket takers. The bottom[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jan 10

2022

Buffalo schools struggle to catch up

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 Most students attending Buffalo public schools had fallen behind academically before the pandemic struck. Only a quarter of elementary and middle school students received proficient scores on their state standardized tests for reading, writing and math.  The learning gap got worse when instruction went remote in March 2020 and continued through most of last school year, when only one-third of students attended class regularly. Yet, the district only held back 546 of its 29,918 students for the school year that started in September. Most of them were high schoolers. Only 43 pupils in the elementary grades were held back.[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jan 5

2022

Samsung turned down subsidies worth $1.9B

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Think the $950 million the state doled out to build and equip a factory for Tesla in South Buffalo was a lot of money? State and local officials offered Samsung twice as much to build a semiconductor plant in rural Genesee County. The $1.9 billion subsidy package would have been the second-largest deal in state history if the company had accepted it. It ranks high nationally, as well. “It would be right in the top dozen of all time in U.S. history,” according to Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a national subsidy watchdog group.  Still, New York’s[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Dec 30

2021

One inspection of grain elevator in 28 years

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Since it bought the Great Northern grain elevator in 1993, ADM Milling Co. has told city officials at least three times the iconic Ganson Street structure needs to come down.  Each time, to justify its request for a demolition permit, the company has commissioned and filed with the city — and most recently with the state Supreme Court — engineering reports and affidavits outlining the building’s alleged structural deficiencies and the danger it poses to the public. And yet, city inspectors have never in those 28 years demanded the company repair the problems those reports detail. The city has never[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Dec 13

2021

Little economic benefit from new stadium

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A new stadium for the Buffalo Bills would boost the Western New York economy as much as a new Target store. Which is to say, very little. While some supporting construction of a new stadium maintain it would be an economic boon, research by economists across the political spectrum has found stadiums generate limited new spending. Rather, they simply redirect how leisure dollars are spent.  “All you are doing is moving time and money around. People are going to the game instead of the movies,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a national subsidy watchdog group. Nor[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Dec 7

2021

Where’s a cop when you need one?

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In Buffalo, crime — and the police response to it — is a tale of two cities. Let’s say you witness an assault in progress on the city’s East Side and call 911. That’s a high-priority call: The threat of harm is immediate and there is — or was, at the time of the call — a suspect on the scene to arrest. The patrol officers who field the call are going to hurry. But they may not arrive as quickly as you’d hope.  In 2019, the median response time for an assault in progress call in C and E[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Nov 16

2021

A record subsidy for Bills stadium?

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 There’s never been a stadium built for a National Football League team that cost taxpayers the $1 billion being bandied about for a new home for the Buffalo Bills. Only one stadium, built to lure the Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas, even comes close, at $750 million. Three other stadiums built over the past decade involved taxpayer subsidies between $114 million and $498 million. Another stadium, built in Los Angeles for the Rams and Chargers, was constructed entirely with $5 billion in private funds. How the Bills and local and state governments split the cost of a new[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 25

2021

Buffalo’s beleaguered municipal finances

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 The story of Buffalo’s municipal finances under Mayor Byron Brown is divided into two chapters. Chapter One covers the five years before the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority — the city’s control board, formed in 2003 to keep the city from going bankrupt — relinquished its oversight power. In the beginning of Brown’s tenure, which began in 2006, the control board helped the city balance budgets and build up millions in reserves. Chapter Two covers the decade since the control board went “soft” in 2011. It’s a very different tale. Since 2011, Brown has proposed — and year after year[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post

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