Investigative Post

It took the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency less than a minute Wednesday to approve $124 million in tax breaks for Amazon to bring 1,000 warehouse jobs to the Town of Niagara. Amazon, one of the world’s largest and wealthiest companies, plans to open a 3-million-square-foot warehouse along Lockport Road, which will be a “first […]

Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter, an excerpt from which you’ll find below. Reinvent Albany has a good rundown of the good and bad of the session’s final flurry.  Among the bad: a $10 billion allocation, negotiated in the dark, to provide huge subsidies to the semiconductor industry. There’s good analysis here and here. New […]

A lot of big ideas have been floated for revitalizing the City of Niagara Falls and most of them have ended the same way: in disappointment.  Residents are still waiting for Niagara Falls Redevelopment — a company owned by New York City real estate developer Howard Milstein — to do something with the 140 acres […]

Well, that didn’t take long. A month after Western New York became home to the largest public subsidy in the history of pro sports stadiums, officials in Nashville, Tennessee are preparing to spend even more taxpayer money to build a new riverfront home for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans.  Tennessee state lawmakers last week approved $500 […]

New York state has a long history of squandering huge amounts of taxpayer money on economic development projects that yield little to no returns.  A new report highlighting the state’s “Dirtiest Dozen” economic development deals ranked four Western New York projects at the top of the list.  The report, developed by the American Economics Liberties […]

New York state Assemblyman Ron Kim did not hold back on Tuesday when asked for his thoughts on the plan to commit $1.13 billion in public funds to help the billionaire owners of the Buffalo Bills build a new $1.4 billion stadium in Orchard Park.  Tempering enthusiasm expressed on Monday by Gov. Kathy Hochul and […]

The fear: A new Bills stadium would cost taxpayers $1 billion. The reality: It’s going to cost even more. The deal announced Monday commits the state to spending $600 million upfront to help cover construction costs. Erie County would put up an additional $250 million. But the subsidies don’t stop there. The state is also on […]

New York doles out more subsidy dollars than almost any state in the nation and one of its more noteworthy programs was marred by corruption. The problems have been evident for years, and especially since Investigative Post exposed bid-rigging in the Buffalo Billion program in 2014 that eventually sent one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top […]