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.

Aug 27

2023

Monday Morning Read

Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading – below – in your inbox Sunday mornings. Our day will come, The New York Times says. That is, climate change is going to make Buffalo a destination for people fleeing the ravages of a warming and otherwise chaotic planet. “Detroit, Cincinnati and Buffalo … are in regions with more climate-friendly geography,” The Times noted. We have access to water, affordable housing and the infrastructure to handle a larger population. If only we could get out of our own way. City of Good Neighbors? Not according to Buffalo News columnist Rod[...]

Posted 9 months ago

Aug 21

2023

New York lax on wage theft collections

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Documented reports on special interests in politics. Saprina James was hopeful when she received a letter in 2019 about her wage theft claim against her former employer. The letter said the New York State Department of Labor had substantiated her claim and ordered Mugisha F. Sahini and his company, Riverside Line, to pay her more than $70,000 in back wages. “I was feeling good that the government was on my side, and that I would soon get[...]

Posted 9 months ago

Aug 13

2023

Monday Morning Read

You could have read this yesterday if you subscribed to WeeklyPost. Sign up here, it’s free. Most police departments in New York State are not reporting crime data to the FBI, according to the Marshall Project. Only “41 out of 583 law enforcement agencies in New York successfully submitted data to the FBI through the National Incident-Based Reporting System in 2022. The agencies that reported any crime stats represent roughly 1 in 5 people in the state,” the Marshall Project reported. “Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia had higher reporting rates than New York.” I checked out the site’s searchable[...]

Posted 9 months ago

Jul 30

2023

Monday Morning Read

Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive Jim Heaney’s recommended reading (below) and a summary of Investigative Post’s reporting of the previous week in your inbox Sunday mornings. It’s free. Such a deal. The USA Today network took a look at government’s response to the Christmas Blizzard and found plenty of blame to go around. “Put simply, emergency management breakdowns cost lives,” the story concluded. A state senator wants his local district attorney to investigate a company who he says lied in an effort to secure IDA subsidies. And no, we’re not talking about the recent shenanigans in Lockport, although maybe we should. Relatively[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jul 25

2023

Cashing in on the post-pandemic learning crisis

This story is republished from ProPublica, a nonprofit, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Investigative Post republishes its work from time to time. For the nation’s schoolchildren, the data on pandemic learning loss is relentlessly bleak, with education researchers and economists warning that, unless dramatic action is taken, students will suffer a lifelong drop in income as a result of lagging achievement. “This cohort of students is going to be punished throughout their lifetime,” noted Eric Hanushek, the Stanford economist who did the income study, in ProPublica’s recent examination of the struggle to make up for what students missed out on during[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jul 23

2023

Monday Morning Read

Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive the complete newsletter in you inbox Sunday mornings. In 2017, Charlotte Keith and I reported that New York state and local economic development agencies were doling out $8.6 billion a year in subsidies under then Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Nevertheless, upstate was saddled with one of the worst economies in the nation. If it were a stand-alone state, it would rank fourth from the bottom. Even worse than Mississippi. A new study is out, issued by Citizens Budget Commission, that reports subsidies in New York have grown to nearly $11 billion and headed higher. The report read in part:[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jul 20

2023

GOP lawmakers to sue over OTB reforms

Dennis Vacco, the state’s former attorney general, has been hired by Niagara County and other Republican-led counties in Western New York to challenge reform measures enacted by the state Legislature in May that affect the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. The changes removed OTB’s existing board and reconstituted its voting powers to shift control from rural to urban counties. Proponents said the changes were necessary to address corruption and cronyism; opponents characterized it as a power play by Democrats at the expense of Republicans. Kevin Schuler, Niagara County’s public information officer, confirmed this week that the county and “several other[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jul 19

2023

Officials rebuke OTB over 11th hour contract extensions

Editor’s note: This story is a continuation of Investigative Post’s content sharing arrangement with the Niagara Gazette. Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick used one word to describe the contract extensions recently granted to 18 executives at the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corporation: “obscene.” State Assembly Member Monica Wallace, who sponsored OTB reform legislation, termed the contract extensions “highly suspect.” The objections were triggered by an April 27 vote by the OTB board to give multi-year contract extensions to CEO and President Henry Wojtaszek and 17 members of his management team. The board acted just days before the state Legislature added[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jim Heaney

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