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.

Jan 12

2024

What’s included, and missing, in Hochul agenda

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here. IT WAS THE FIRST in a series of big days in Albany. At 1 pm Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul gave her 2024 State of the State address, outlining the past year’s achievements and the coming year’s priorities. The speech kicked off what’s sure to be a tense legislative session, as November’s elections loom and the governor and legislature work through their frosty relationship. We looked out for the year’s big political fights. New York Focus had five[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jan 11

2024

No follow up to OTB ticket scandal

In the fall of 2021, state auditors criticized representatives of Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. for improperly helping themselves to an estimated $121,000 in tickets for professional sports games, concerts and other shows, as well as thousands of dollars in food and drinks they consumed while taking in the action. More than two years later, a spokesperson for state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli concedes their office doesn’t know whether OTB officials have taken any action on one of the audit’s main recommendations: identify individuals who improperly received tickets and seek reimbursement. “We were not informed if WROTB sought and received reimbursements,”[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jan 8

2024

Monday Morning Read

WeeklyPost has a new look, but the some old price: free. Subscribe today. And coming Wednesday, another email newsletter, PoliticalPost, written by Geoff Kelly. Mark Sommer of The Buffalo News has been doing a really good job of bird-dogging developments involving the Kensington Expressway. At the behest of Gov. Kathy Hochul, the state Department of Transportation is pushing a project to cover a portion of the Kensington Expressway. Last week, Mark reported someone with ties to the DOT and the engineering firm in line for business if the project proceeds distributed prewritten letters of support for the work at a[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jan 1

2024

Monday Morning Read

Start out your year by subscribing, for free, to WeeklyPost. A recent op-ed in The New York Times contrasted policies in red and blue states. It noted that in states controlled by Republicans there is an ongoing assault on the rights of people to live their lives unencumbered by government. It noted the limitation GOP lawmakers have placed on everything from voting and abortion rights to what books are stocked on library shelves and curriculum taught in schools. And, of course, there’s the obsession with gay and transgender people. Taken all together, you could say that Republicans are engaged in a[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Dec 25

2023

Monday Morning Read

Merry Christmas! If you don’t already subscribe to WeeklyPost, give yourself a gift right now! Christmas has been effectively cancelled in Bethlehem. Alden Global Capital is the worst of the worst chain owners of newspapers. Here’s what they’ve done to the paper in Joe Biden’s hometown since buying it, and here’s what they’re doing to Greyhound bus stations. Yeah, there’s a connection. Lee Enterprises – owner of The Buffalo News, or what’s left of it – reported a disappointing year. The past five years haven’t been so hot, either. The current issue of The Nation, much of it focused on[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Dec 17

2023

Monday Morning Read

A subscription to WeeklyPost is free. Need I say more? Politicians have pointed to the creation of 50,000 good paying jobs to justify the massive $6.4 billion subsidy of a planned microchip factory north of Syracuse. The Syracuse Post-Standard put those claims under the microscope and found direct employment would be a lot less. A whole lot less. The biggest chunk of new workers would be government employees – great – and many others would be waiters, bus drivers and hotel and day care workers – not necessarily full-time and certainly not good paying. Mind you, a lot of direct jobs will be created.[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Dec 14

2023

‘A Crazy System’: How arbitration returns abusive guards to New York prisons

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook. The Marshall Project is distributing this story via Investigative Post, the (Albany) Times Union and New York Focus. A guard working at a Hudson Valley prison pummeled a 19-year-old shackled by the legs to a restraint chair. An officer at a facility near the Canadian border denied food to a man in solitary confinement 13 times over a week. Outside Albany, a guard told a prisoner, “That’s how you get dumped on your fucking[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Dec 10

2023

Monday Morning Read

The Guardian published a piece that underscored just how out of step the Bills stadium project in Orchard Park is. Most owners, says Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, “understand that having an entertainment district that generates money 365 days a year is way better than the model of a walled fortress surrounded by a moat of parking lots” that is used a handful of times a year. “NFL parking lots are about the worst possible use of real estate you can think of,” he adds. “You’d much rather have a stadium in a[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jim Heaney

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