Categories for Broadcast on Channel 7

Oct 16

2025

The Central Terminal’s costly redevelopment plan

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The nonprofit charged with redeveloping Buffalo’s landmark New York Central Terminal, situated in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, has proposed converting two buildings on the sprawling campus into apartments that could cost as much as $900,000 per unit to build. Critics tell Investigative Post the cost is astronomical and a poor use of taxpayer dollars.  In June, the developer and nonprofit announced plans to spend $80 million to develop 90 to 110 affordable apartments, plus potential commercial space, in a former mail sorting and storage facility adjacent to the Central Terminal’s iconic tower and a city-owned structure that housed[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Sep 30

2025

Buffalo’s Housing Court: Fewer fines, lax collections

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The City of Buffalo over the past six years has failed to collect $6.5 million in Housing Court fines that could help to address the city’s budget deficits.  Since January 2020, Housing Court judges have issued $7,024,200 in fines, according to data Investigative Post obtained from the New York State Office of Court Administration. The city has collected $481,500, or 8.5 percent of the fines issued. And between 2017 and 2019, the city failed to collect another $6.8 million in Housing Court fines, according to city records. That’s more than $13 million the city has left on the table over[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Sep 10

2025

Jemal late in paying millions in bills

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Contractors have filed nearly $3.7 million in liens for unpaid bills against Doug Jemal’s projects in Western New York over the past year and a half. It’s another indicator that high interest rates and the diminished market for office and retail space have put the screws to the developer’s business.  Jemal called those conditions “a pandemic of real estate” that have made cash flow tight for his company and real-estate developers across the country.  “There’s cash flow issues, no doubt,” he told Investigative Post. “But we’re taking care of this. We pay our bills.” The mechanics liens — a legal[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Aug 31

2025

Wojtaszek eyes return to OTB

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Henry Wojtaszek, the former president and CEO of Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., is planning to rejoin the organization he left last year, this time as member of the board of directors. Elliott Winter, who previously represented Niagara County on the OTB board, resigned from that position last week, creating an opening for Wojtaszek, who lives in North Tonawanda. Wojtaszek’s appointment as Niagara County’s new representative on the board, by law, must be approved by that county’s legislature. But in text messages to OTB board members, Wojtaszek expressed confidence the county lawmakers will vote to approve his appointment in the[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Aug 27

2025

Granville case costing city taxpayers

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The City of Buffalo has paid more than $200,000 to the five police officers who responded to the Erie County narcotics chief’s hit-and-run accident on the city’s West Side last spring since they were put on leave in April. The total cost to city taxpayers is considerably higher, however, because the city also has to pay officers to backfill the shifts those five cops are missing.  And sometimes the city has to pay overtime for that, because the police union’s contract calls for mandatory overtime pay when the department has to call in officers to take the place of colleagues[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Aug 14

2025

Feds fault Scanlon campaign for Hatch Act violations

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x Federal investigators last week ruled that Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s campaign violated laws prohibiting elected officials from using their offices or public resources for political gain. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel found the acting mayor’s campaign on four occasions violated the federal Hatch Act: Issuing a press release “using official City of Buffalo resources” attacking state Sen. Sean Ryan in response to Ryan’s criticism of conditions at the city’s animal shelter. Mailing invitations to a December fundraiser using the mayor’s office in City Hall as the return address on the envelopes. Publishing links to the Scanlon campaign’s social[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Aug 6

2025

Police overtime in July unabated

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One month into the city’s fiscal year, the City of Buffalo’s efforts to rein in the cost of police overtime have not manifested any savings. In the first two paychecks issued in the month of July, the city paid cops more than $1.9 million in overtime, according to city payroll data. Total pay for police in the pay periods covered by those checks was nearly $8.5 million. In July 2024, police overtime cost a little more than $1.8 million out of $8.2 million total. The July before that, it was $1.6 million out of nearly $8 million total. In other[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jul 24

2025

A pay raise already for Byron Brown at OTB

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On the job less than a year, Byron Brown has already secured himself a raise at the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. Brown, hired as new president and CEO last fall, won a 3 percent raise Thursday, bringing his total pay to $303,850. That’s ahead of a contractual $10,000 raise scheduled to take effect in January, which will carry Brown’s total pay to nearly $314,000. Five other corporation officials were also granted 3 percent raises by a unanimous vote of OTB’s board. The raise Thursday solidifies Brown as the highest paid OTB leader across New York. The next-highest paid OTB[...]

Posted 3 months ago
Investigative Post