Jim Heaney

Jim Heaney is editor and executive director of Investigative Post. He was an investigative reporter with The Buffalo News from 1986 to 2011 and a reporter and editor with The Orlando Sentinel from 1980-86. His coverage over the years has focused on economic development, local and state government, politics, education, housing and transportation, and he was an early practitioner of computer-assisted reporting. Heaney has won more than 20 journalism awards and was a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Mar 3

2025

Talk about riding a dead horse

Here’s a strange – and indefensible – subsidy. Government handouts to keep the failing horse racing industry afloat in New York. “The state is using one particularly corrosive form of gambling to keep another marginalized form alive,” reports The New York Times. The story is behind a paywall, but fear not, you can read it at this gift link, which provides access even if you’re not a subscriber. Going forward, this newsletter will provide gift links to stories in publications that include The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. While we’re on the topic of state government, the[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Feb 24

2025

Subsides amounting to billions of dollars

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 3 months ago

Feb 17

2025

Making the case for IDA reform

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 4 months ago

Feb 10

2025

Censorship, and other problems, at The Buffalo News

Delivery problems – and apparently the lack of a spine – continue to plague The Buffalo News. Since the weather turned cold and snowy, home delivery has been hit and miss. I still subscribe and there’s probably been a half-dozen days since Christmastime where I haven’t received a paper. One time, it was a multiple-day stretch. Last week, technical troubles forced The News to shrink the size of its print edition. “A serious technical outage is creating production issues for all Lee newspapers,” Editor Margaret Kenny wrote in Thursday’s paper. “Our IT staff is working around the clock to fully[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Feb 3

2025

Trump’s trade war with our northern neighbor

Donald Trump declared economic war on Canada over the weekend. The Wall Street Journal called it the “dumbest trade war.” The Buffalo News assessed the impact on Western New York – not good – and noted how little fentanyl enters the United State from across our northern border. NPR details the folly in Trump’’s fentanyl claims. CNN details what consumer products will get more expensive as a result. Canada strikes back. Experts discuss the impacts, including the exchange rate. (The American dollar was worth $1.48 Canadian as of Sunday night.) Hockey fans in Ottawa and basketball fans in Toronto boo[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jan 31

2025

Calling out Jeremy Zellner

Updated: 3:57 p.m. I write this post staring at the tweet posted below by Jeremy Zellner, chairman of the Erie County Democratic party. In it, he takes our Geoff Kelly to task for reporting on the forum the party hosted on Saturday where eight mayoral candidates were invited to speak to party committee members from the city. According to Zellner, more than 200 committee members attended. The forum kicked off with a question to the candidates posed by Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz: Would the candidates promise not to seek the endorsement of the local Republican and Conservative parties? The[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jan 27

2025

Trump sets the table for lawlessness

I expected Trump’s first week in office to be terrible. It was worse than terrible, in so many ways. I want to focus on Trump’s use of pardons. It wasn’t just those given to the January 6 insurrectionists. Consider: Trump also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for running a website used to sell drugs in what the FBI called “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet.” Trump called the prosecutors who put Ulbricht in jail “scum.” The president also gave pardons to two white Washington, D.C., cops responsible for the death of a[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jan 20

2025

Welcome to 1933

Donald Trump is sworn in as president today. Welcome to 1933. That’s the year Adolf Hitler came to power. I’m not saying Trump will be another Hitler, but there are eerie parallels to their respective routes to power that should not be ignored. Trump’s more contemporary prototype is Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, termed “the ultimate twenty-first-century dictator.” An op-ed in last week’s New York Times described Orbán’s playbook: In a second term, Mr. Trump’s actions may be even more dangerous because he is now following the playbook created by Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, who after losing and then[...]

Posted 4 months ago