Articles for Adam Smith-Perez

Mar 2

2026

Save the Michaels loses funding, closes facility

A screenshot of a Facebook post showing a sign taped to a window at Save the Michaels Lockport location. Save the Michaels, a well-known addiction treatment nonprofit with services across Western New York, has indefinitely closed its Lockport office and is scaling back at least part of its operations at its Buffalo headquarters, according to current and former employees. The news follows announcements that New York State and Erie County officials are cutting off funding to the 15-year-old organization, as well as an Investigative Post investigation, published last week, into concerns about the nonprofit’s management. In a Facebook post from[...]

Posted 6 days ago

Feb 25

2026

The trouble with Save the Michaels

A Save the Michaels billboard on Broadway Street in Sloan. Photo: Adam Smith-Perez. Save the Michaels, a prominent addiction services provider, will lose its Erie County funding this summer following a state audit that identified years of fiscal mismanagement. The county’s decision to pull its support coincides with an Investigative Post investigation into the nonprofit agency that found slipshod financial practices, a hostile work environment and inaction by state and local regulators. It also comes on the heels of Save the Michaels founder Avi Israel’s resignation as chief executive, two years after an Erie County official first sounded alarms about[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Feb 17

2026

Continued questionable spending of opioid funds

The fire department recently used $1,761 of opioid settlement funds on the Cotter fireboat. Photo credit: WKBW Mayor Sean Ryan’s administration has continued the city’s practice of spending money earmarked to address opioid addiction on unrelated equipment. Since January 1, when Ryan took office, the fire and police departments have used over $10,000 in grant money intended to battle opioid overdoses to buy snowblowers, electronics, and upgrades to a 2025 Ford Explorer, according to city records. Investigative Post reported in December that since 2023, the city has received some $6 million in opioid settlement funds from the state. To date,[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Jan 8

2026

Buffalo sued over East Side police training facility

A notice posted this summer outside the site of a proposed police training facility on Buffalo’s East Side. Photo by Adam Smith-Perez. An activist organization and four East Side residents have sued the city, the Common Council and the police department to stop the conversion of a former community center into a police training facility and shooting range. The organization Liberation For One, Liberation for All, also known as LOLA, filed the lawsuit on Dec. 23, arguing that the rezoning violates several state and local laws. Much of the suit is based on the city’s alleged violation of state environmental[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Jan 1

2026

Adam Smith-Perez’s first year covering Buffalo

I’ve visited Buffalo’s East Side to report over a dozen times, but the first time will stick with me. During my first weeks, my editor, Jim Heaney, told me to meet a few sources on the East Side: Steve Karnath at Broadway-Fillmore Neighborhood Housing Services, and Chris Hawley at his socialist, volunteer-run bar, the Eugene V. Debs Social Hall. I arrived at Debs at dusk on a summer evening. All the doors and windows were open. Hawley and his giant dog greeted me, along with a couple of his friends. A regular was barbecuing out front. I sampled a few[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 24

2025

Tenants again sue judge-turned-landlord

APL Property’s apartment building on Elmwood Avenue. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel. A Buffalo couple is suing former county judge-turned-developer Anthony LoRusso for alleged rental fraud — the third lawsuit LoRusso and his real estate companies have faced this year. Two of those court actions originated with renters, the other with a contractor. All told, courts this year have levied more than $300,000 in judgments against LoRusso’s companies. The first suit was filed by LaBella Associates D.P.C., an environmental consulting firm, in March, followed by the attorney general’s in May. In September, Sabrina and Antonéo Page filed a lawsuit against[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 3

2025

Opioid epidemic funds lack oversight, transparency

Overdose-reversal drugs at a liquor store on Niagara Street in Buffalo’s Riverside neighborhood. Photo by Adam Smith-Perez. This is the second of two stories about government’s response to the opioid epidemic. Nearly half a billion dollars intended to address the opioid epidemic has flowed through state agencies in New York over the past four years, the result of an ongoing legal battle against opioid manufacturers and distributors for abetting addiction. Experts have concerns about how those funds are being deployed — not just by the state, but by the counties, cities and towns that have been granted shares of the[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Dec 2

2025

Buffalo’s indifferent response to opioid overdoses

Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories on the use of opioid settlement funds by government agencies. Part 2 is here. The City of Buffalo has spent less than a third of the almost $6 million in state funding it has received over the past three years to fight the opioid epidemic. During that time, more than 500 people died of overdoses within Buffalo city limits, according to data from the Erie County medical examiner. The victims have been disproportionately Black and Latino. Of the $1.75 million the city has spent, about $500,000 went for equipment and activities[...]

Posted 3 months ago