Tag: Buffalo

Sep 22

2016

Investigative Post’s Buffalo Billion reporting

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Gov. Cuomo’s signature Buffalo Billion initiative was mired in corruption and bid-rigging, according to a federal complaint unsealed Thursday. The complaint alleges what has long been suspected: the RFP for Buffalo developers to build the $750 million factory for SolarCity was designed with one company, LPCiminelli, in mind. SUNY Polytechnic president Alain Kaloyeros, lobbyist Todd Howe, and executives at Buffalo-based LPCiminelli worked together to “secretly tailor” the required qualifications for a developer in Buffalo so that LPCiminelli would be guaranteed to win the work, according to the complaint. A similar pattern of collaboration is alleged to have taken place between Kaloyeros, Howe and[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Mar 29

2016

Buffalo failing to enforce diversity law

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  Mayor Byron Brown has done a lot of talking about the need to provide job opportunities for people of color. He’s pushed some 210 businesses and organizations to sign his “Opportunity Pledge” and spoken in favor of apprentice programs that give young workers a foot in the door of the construction trades. The mayor, however, has failed to use a powerful tool at his disposal to promote diversity in the workforce. City Hall under Brown has failed to enforce a law that mandates the employment of apprentices on city-financed capital projects. “They do not enforce it at all,” said[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Mar 14

2016

Buffalo: Real State of the City

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Buffalo is doing better, but is it doing as well as the politicians and much of the local press would have us believe? The answer, in a word, is “no.” That was the bottom line to my address Feb. 24 at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Progress has been overstated. There’s a lot of racial inequality. We’re a high-crime city where few criminals get caught. And Buffalo is a ward of the state. Charlotte Keith and I dug deep into the data to provide a factual, statistical framework on which I based my conclusions. Here they are, in a nutshell:[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Mar 10

2016

Heaney discusses Buffalo ills on ‘Pressroom

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Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney, revisiting his “Real State of the City” presentation made last month, tells Susan Arbetter of The Capitol Pressroom that Buffalo continues to experience its share of problems. He noted that Buffalo has become a financial ward of the state and that income inequality between whites and people of color is especially pronounced in the region. Heaney’s portion of the interview runs from 22:13 to 36:45.

Posted 8 years ago

Feb 23

2016

Buffalo trade unions lagging in diversity

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  Construction in Buffalo is booming. SolarCity. Children’s Hospital. The University at Buffalo Medical School. Taxpayer-funded projects like these are employing thousands of union construction workers. But the boom has resurrected concerns that the unions have made little progress over the past decade in diversifying their membership. While minorities make up 17 percent of Erie County’s workforce and more than half of the city’s population, they account for only 11 percent of unionized construction workers, according to the most recent figures available. What’s more, there’s been virtually no change in the racial makeup of the building trades over the past[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Aug 27

2015

A call for action on sewer overflows

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The federal Environmental Protection Agency gave Buffalo 20 years to curb its sewer overflows into Scajaquada Creek and other waterways flowing through the city. That’s not fast enough, said Erie County Legislator Patrick Burke, whose district includes Cazenovia Creek, which, like the Scajaquada, he says is badly polluted by sewer overflows. The lack of urgency among local, state and federal authorities has him frustrated. Therefore, he’s invited the responsible parties to a public meeting next month in an attempt to bring transparency to a problem that’s tainted local waterways for a century. “We’ve kicked the can down the road on[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Jun 25

2015

Recycling coming to Buffalo’s waterfront

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In San Francisco, residents can recycle food waste. In fact, it’s mandated. In Seattle, residents can recycle cigarette butts. But in Buffalo, we can’t even get recycling bins downtown. Despite this, there is something good to report. Baby steps, folks. Canalside visitors will soon notice bins for recycling cans and bottles at the popular waterfront destination. Wednesday morning, the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. in the Town of Tonawanda provided the city with 50 recycling containers. This is a step in the right direction in the city’s effort to boost its dismal recycling rate, which is less than half the national average. But what[...]

Posted 9 years ago

May 21

2015

Central Terminal decays as board delays

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For years, the Central Terminal suffered from willful neglect at the hands of its private owners. While the building lay open to vandals, artifacts were stolen and metal pipes stripped out. When the non-profit Central Terminal Restoration Corporation took ownership in 1997, the hope was that the group would halt the building’s deterioration and find a responsible developer to secure its long-term future. But the building is still deteriorating. And dysfunction in the Restoration Corporation’s board of directors has hampered progress in preserving and redeveloping it, former board members have told Investigative Post. “There’s so many different things wrong with[...]

Posted 9 years ago
Investigative Post

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