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.

Apr 19

2012

IDA deals trigger backlash

The Erie County Industrial Development Agency has put a moratorium on granting tax breaks to hotels. The Lancaster IDA is having second thoughts about proposed tax breaks for a pizzeria. Labor unions are challenging the hiring practices at a Niagara Falls company that received property in tax breaks in 2010. After years of “full steam ahead,” local IDAs are starting to have second thoughts about business as usual. That’s not to say they’ve necessarily changed their ways – questionable projects continue to get the green light more often than not – but there’s been an unmistakenable swing in momentum. “IDAs[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 17

2012

Online journalism coming of age

The Pulitzer Prize is the measure by which excellence in journalism is measured. Until recently, newspapers won by default. There was no alternative (with apologies to the Emmy Awards). But in recent years, entrepreneurs have established online-only news publications. There are for profits, including Politico, Talking Points Memo and, of course, Huffington Post. There are even more non-profit investigative reporting centers, lead by ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting and its affiliated California Watch, and regional centers including Voice of San Diego and MinnPost, headed by former Courier-Express editor Joel Kramer. These young pups are proving capable of going toe-to-toe[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 15

2012

Taxing questions regarding the Bills

The key study isn’t done, and negotiations have yet to start in earnest, but it’s not too early to start posing questions about who should pay for what to keep the Bills in Buffalo. The teams’ lease on Ralph Wilson Stadium expires in July 2013 season and a story in The Buffalo News on Sunday reports that sources are saying the cost of renovating the facility will run north of $200 million. Given the cost of upgrading the home of the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs ran $295 million and $400 million respectively, that seems like a safe,[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 14

2012

Superheroes, mere mortals and corporations

Planes, trains and automobiles Bruce Fisher has an interesting read this week in Artvoice regard U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins’ call for $1.25 trillion in spending to repair the nation’s infrastructure. With luck, Higgins and his buildup plan could become the national counter to Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The proposal is bound to encounter resistance, but Higgins will gain some nature stature if it gains traction. Stay tuned. Money to ply politicians, but not to pay taxes More than two-dozen major U.S. corporations paid no net federal income taxes from 2009-11 despite posting billions upon billions of dollars in profits.[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 11

2012

Disclosure dysfunction

Common Council Majority Leader Demone A. Smith, whose wife pleaded guilty to fraud charges last week, has legal problems of his own. Smith’s campaign committee has not paid $1,842 in judgments filed by the state Board of Elections for its failure to file disclosure reports in a timely fashion. In addition, another campaign committee that lists Smith as its treasurer hasn’t paid $1,121 in judgments involving late and missing disclosure reports. Smith’s campaign committee has had problems meeting disclosure requirements since he first ran for public office in 2005. Investigative Post has determined that while the Committee to Elect Demone[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 8

2012

Sabres fans get poor return on investment

It turns out Joe Friday is a hockey fan. Who woulda thunk it, Joe being from Los Angeles and all. Detective Friday realizes that while Terry Pegula owns the Buffalo Sabres, the team’s fan base pays the bills. What kind of return on investment did they get this season? When you consider the Sabres ranked No. 2 for payroll and No. 18 for points, the ROI was among the worst in the league. Only two teams spent more per point. Here are the facts: Team Team payroll for 2011-12 season: $69,830,000. Rank in league: Second highest after the Philadelphia Flyers[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 6

2012

Weekend News Cafe: Hydrofracking, muckraking & rock ‘n’ roll

A muckraking columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times is both thoughtful and provocative. Consider two recent columns. First, his take on a couple of studies of all the chemical junk fed to the animals that are the source of our meat. My topic today is a pair of new scientific studies suggesting that poultry on factory farms are routinely fed caffeine, active ingredients of Tylenol and Benadryl, banned antibiotics and even arsenic … To me, this underscores the pitfalls of industrial farming. When I was growing up on our hopelessly inefficient family farm, we didn’t routinely drug animals.[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 5

2012

Lessons for Buffalo from a boomtown

Buffalo is not Austin, Texas, and never will be. They bake. We freeze. They have Lance Armstrong. We had OJ. They don’t pay state income taxes. We do. Oh boy, do we. But I’ve come away from two visits to Austin since last summer thinking there are lessons to be learned. The Texas capital is booming. Austin proper added some 160,000 residents between 2001 and 2010, up 20 percent. Only one major metro area grew at a faster pace. The region also added jobs at a faster rate than any major metro area in the nation over the past eight[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Jim Heaney

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