Investigative Post

Sergio Rodriguez isn’t daunted by the odds of running for mayor as a Republican in a city where Democrats hold a seven-to-one enrollment edge. Rodriguez, 32, is a native of the Dominican Republic. His family moved to the United States when he was 10 and grew up on Long Island. Rodriguez moved to Buffalo a [...]

Mark Schroeder serves as Buffalo’s fiscal watchdog in his job as city comptroller. He made news recently by raising concerns about City Hall’s budgeting practices, which have involved the use of reserve funds the past three years to balance the books. Schroeder, 57, spent 25 years in the private sector, working for two food companies [...]

Antoine Thompson couldn’t find a job when voters fired him from his state Senate job two years ago. So, of course, Mayor Byron Brown has now hired Thompson to help the county’s 37,900 unemployed find jobs. Yeah, right. This is about as blatant – and shameless – as patronage hiring gets. First consider that Thompson [...]

There’s a lot to like about the blueprint for spending $1 billion in state aid to revitalize the Western New York economy that was released Tuesday. I’d feel better about the plan’s prospects, however, if Gov. Andrew Cuomo hadn’t used its release to announce a heavily subsidized deal to bring 250 jobs here that smacks of [...]

Byron Brown’s track record of hiring African Americans administrators – he doesn’t, for the most part – is surprising until you put it in a larger context. An analysis by Sue Schulman of The Buffalo News two weeks ago showed blacks account for only one of 12 commissioners, all of whom operate under the heavy [...]

By Jim Heaney / Investigative Post You can’t get away without paying your property taxes or garbage fee or even a parking ticket without City Hall coming after you. Letting your property go to seed is another matter. Judges in City Housing Court have imposed more than $22 million in fines since 2006 against some [...]

Federal housing officials are tightening the screws on City Hall over its chronic mismanagement of anti-poverty funds. A series of critical reports and audits have documented problems dating back to the Griffin-era, but meaningful sanctions to this point have been few and far between. But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is now [...]