Categories for Analysis

Jun 5

2025

Where Ryan stands on the issues

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State Sen. Sean Ryan at a May 30 press conference in Lafayette Square. This is the second of two stories on mayoral hopeful Sean Ryan. On Wednesday we published a political profile. Sean Ryan doesn’t lack for ideas on how to fix what he sees as dysfunction in City Hall and the impact it has had on neighborhoods across Buffalo. “We can’t do the basics. We’re not delivering basic services for our people. And that’s not even scratching the surface on our systemic problems,” he told Investigative Post. “The neglect is becoming more and more apparent. Can’t plow our roads,[...]

Posted 21 hours ago

Jun 4

2025

Sean Ryan: a political profile

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State Sen. Sean Ryan at a May 30 press conference in Lafayette Square.  This is the first of two stories on mayoral hopeful Sean Ryan. On Thursday we published a  story on where he stands on the issues.  State Sen. Sean Ryan has a long history of advancing progressive causes, both in his 14 years as a state legislator and in his prior career as an attorney. He’s championed urban highway removal, affordable housing, living wage ordinances, tax subsidy reforms and a host of other issues that reflect the priorities of the heavily Democratic districts he’s represented in Albany.   Now,[...]

Posted 2 days ago

May 29

2025

More bad budgeting from Buffalo politicians

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Writing about the City of Buffalo’s finances is like watching the movie Groundhog Day, but the wheel of suffering never stops turning.  Before the story reaches its happy-ever-after conclusion, the film rewinds to the beginning. Again and again, year after year. The Common Council on Tuesday adopted, with few minor amendments, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s proposed budget for the city’s upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1.  The $622 million plan recycles many of the fiscal sins of the Byron Brown administration, whose specious revenue and expense projections yielded deficit after deficit — backfilled first with cash from the city’s[...]

Posted 1 week ago

May 21

2025

Buffalo mayoral candidates hit the airwaves

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 State Sen. Sean Ryan, who’s running for Buffalo mayor in the June 24 Democratic primary, released his first TV commercial two weeks ago. The ad hits the talking points Ryan has been using since he announced his candidacy in November:  He’s the son of a Lackawanna teacher and a Buffalo firefighter.  He became a successful housing rights attorney, then a state legislator who brought home money and projects for his districts. The city’s infrastructure and delivery of basic services have gone to pot, and he’s got the experience to put things right. State Senator Sean Ryan’s first TV ad. The[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

May 12

2025

Scanlon supports Benderson’s move from Buffalo to Amherst

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Benderson Development wants to move its corporate headquarters — as well as those of Delta Sonic, its car wash company — to an office and warehouse complex the real-estate giant owns in Amherst. And the company wants $1.4 million in property and sales tax breaks from the Amherst Industrial Development Agency to help underwrite the $26 million relocation. Benderson’s local operations are currently housed at 570 Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo. Delta Sonic has corporate offices there, too, and in the City of Tonawanda. Surprisingly, the mayors of both cities wrote letters to the Amherst IDA in support of the tax breaks.[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

May 5

2025

Control board asks Scanlon for a backup plan

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The Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority last week instructed Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon to produce a fallback plan should the revenue projections in his proposed budget fail to pan out. Particularly worrisome to the control board is an estimated $26.5 million Scanlon hopes to raise in the next year by selling the city’s parking ramps. The measure requires state legislation that — as of my hitting send on this newsletter, anyway — has not been approved. Control board members were concerned, too, about how much money the city would get for the ramps, and whether the sale could be completed quickly enough to[...]

Posted 1 month ago

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 2 months ago

Apr 10

2025

The good and bad in Scanlon’s budget

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Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon in City Hall. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s first budget proposal is balanced with $30 million that may not materialize, absent cooperation from lawmakers in Albany. His $622 million spending plan also depends on upticks in the cost, enforcement and collection of city fees and fines that often have fallen short of expectations. Its viability also swings on a dramatic reduction in overtime costs, which in recent years have gone nowhere but up.  In short, Scanlon’s budget shares many characteristics with those of Byron Brown, his predecessor: some rosy revenue assumptions, a one-shot[...]

Posted 2 months ago
Investigative Post