Tag: Buffalo Billion

Apr 17

2025

IDAs responsible for millions in tax breaks, fees

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Meetings of the Erie and Niagara county IDAs (top) and the Genesee County IDA industrial park (bottom). Across Western New York last year, some 639 companies were allowed to skip out on $91 million in tax payments. In exchange, those companies kept nearly 18,000 people employed.  The story doesn’t end there. The companies also paid fees to the industrial development agencies that issued those tax breaks — nearly $22 million in 2024. For nine of the 13 IDAs in the region, those fees covered 75 percent or more of their annual budgets. Those figures are spelled out in the annual[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Apr 8

2025

Tesla spends taxpayer ‘slush fund’ on new cafeteria

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When Tesla employees show up to work nowadays in South Buffalo, a cafeteria serving breakfast, lunch and dinner — along with snacks and coffee — awaits. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch: Tesla employees must pay for the meals, which include salads, pasta, pizza and sandwiches. The other catch? New York State taxpayers have footed the bill for the eatery, which cost $1.6 million to build. Records obtained by Investigative Post show the electric vehicle maker continues to spend taxpayer dollars each year on the factory, which the state spent $959 million to build and equip. The[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Mar 25

2025

Wage theft widespread in Western New York

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The theft of employee wages is widespread across Western New York, data from state and federal labor departments show. State and federal labor investigators found some 1,900 regional employers withheld $17.1 million in pay and benefits from 23,613 workers over the past decade.  That’s an average of $3,066 per affected worker, according to data collected by Documented and analyzed by Investigative Post. Some employers were found to owe a handful of employees large amounts — more than $40,000 in some cases — while others were found to owe many workers small amounts. The median worker was returned $500 due to[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Mar 19

2025

More subsidies for restaurateur accused of wage theft

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A Niagara Falls restaurateur under investigation for allegations of wage theft received a third round of tax breaks Wednesday. With little discussion, the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency unanimously approved $51,000 in sales tax breaks for Muhammad Shoaib to open a Church’s Chicken, Jamba Juice and Carvel Ice Cream in downtown Niagara Falls. Meanwhile, five former employees, three of them managers, have come forward with new allegations that Shoaib and his wife, Hina Qureshi, failed to pay overtime and withheld tips from their workers. They told Investigative Post the couple altered payroll entries and told employees to destroy records and[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Mar 13

2025

Buffalo moves to call in Braymiller Market loan

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Inside the now-closed Braymiller Market. Photo by Garrett Looker. Capping off the saga of downtown Buffalo’s failed grocery store, city officials on Thursday took a major step towards calling in the loan issued to  Braymiller Market two years ago. In a unanimous decision, the loan committee of the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency voted to issue a letter of default, the legal mechanism for demanding back the $561,000 the city is owed. BURA’s full board is expected to approve the recommendation when it meets March 27. It remains unclear whether the city will recoup the funds.  By issuing the default —[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Mar 6

2025

Mega-subsidy deal for data center

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With subsidies totaling $3.9 million per job, the Genesee County Economic Development Center gave the green light Thursday to a massive data center project to locate at its STAMP industrial park. The industrial development agency’s board of directors unanimously approved a proposal by STREAM U.S. Data Centers to construct a 900,000 square foot data center at the rural business park north of Batavia. The firm will purchase nearly 60 acres of STAMP’s more than 1,200 acre footprint and build a server farm the size of 16 football fields. The subsidy package totals $472 million, primarily sales tax exemptions on computer[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 24

2025

Subsides amounting to billions of dollars

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Politicians can’t throw enough money at Micron Technology to entice the company to build a microchip factory north of Syracuse. Ken Girardin of the Empire Center for Public Policy took a close look at the deal, and yikes, it is rich enough to make the Buffalo Billion deal that brought Tesla to South Buffalo look like a steal — which it wasn’t unless you’re Elon Musk. Micron is in line for subsidies worth more than $11 billion. That’s billion, not million. Among the goodies: Up to $5.5 billion in state tax credits. Tax abatements, sales and otherwise, of $4.9 billion. Property tax abatements that[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 17

2025

Making the case for IDA reform

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There’s a case to be made for consolidating and reforming Western New York’s myriad of industrial development agencies into a single operation. There’s six alone in Erie County, another three in Niagara. Add the outlying counties and there’s no fewer than 16 of them. There’s too many of them. They compete against each other. They can’t resist the built-in conflict of interest in which they earn a commission if they approve a deal and get zilch if they don’t. Let’s face it, if they were effective, our regional economy would be in better shape. Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First, who, for my[...]

Posted 3 months ago
Investigative Post