Categories for Co-produced with WGRZ

Mar 20

2023

Moog seeking 14th tax subsidy from IDA

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Moog Inc., one of Western New York’s largest employers, is a highly profitable company, netting $155 million last year alone. That’s partly due to the billions in federal defense contracts it’s landed over the past decade. Yet time and time again — 13 times since 1973 — Moog has gone before the Erie County Industrial Development Agency seeking — and receiving — millions in tax breaks. It’s received nearly $10 million in subsidies since 2006. The company is headed back to the IDA on Wednesday asking for a 14th round of subsidies. Moog’s request for $2.9 million in sales and[...]

Posted 1 day ago

Mar 13

2023

Get a load of @ChrissyCaBoom’s tweets

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As a first-time candidate for elected office, one of Chrissy Casilio-Bluhm’s biggest challenges is introducing herself to voters. But it appears the Republican challenger to incumbent Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz doesn’t want voters to know her too well. In the days prior to and since winning the GOP endorsement on Feb. 25, Casilio-Bluhm scrubbed her Twitter account of posts and retweets that amplified conspiracy theories, including the belief that COVID was the creation of “ONE Globalist Party,” which “rigged an election” and “destroyed Trump” for “exposing the Swamp.” She also promulgated the conspiracy that the Buffalo Bills covered up[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Mar 8

2023

Union busting hamstrings adoption agency

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The complicated process of adopting a child was upended last year after Western New York’s largest adoption agency lost a third of its staff, an exodus triggered by what one labor attorney called the worst case of union busting she has seen. Adoption STAR, founded in 2000 in Amherst, fired four staff members last April who were attempting to organize a union. The firings resulted in an exodus of the agency’s staff — 13 out of approximately three dozen employees. The departures included the agency’s executive director — who left a month after the firings — and an associate director.[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Mar 2

2023

No permits for work that might have sparked deadly fire

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The fire that killed a Buffalo firefighter Wednesday might have been sparked by crews working on the Main Street building without permits. A review of city records by Investigative Post found no active permits for work at 743 Main St., which was recently purchased by a company owned by former Congressman Chris Jacobs. Michael DeGeorge, spokesman for Mayor Byron Brown, confirmed that the city’s Department of Permits and Inspection Services had “no active or valid permits” on file. The most recent work permit the city issued for 743 Main Street was last April, for emergency repairs to the three-storey building’s[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Feb 23

2023

Most suburbs lag on reading instruction

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Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series. Our previous story focused on the challenges face by Buffalo schools and its adoption of a phonics-based approach. Unlike 30 other states, New York does not require a phonics-based approach to reading instruction. That leaves each of the state’s 731 school districts free to select its own reading curriculum. “New York, in general, is behind most other states when it comes to this, which I think is reflected in the reading scores,” said Jeff Smink, deputy director of The Education Trust – New York. “Every district is like the Wild West,”[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Feb 22

2023

Buffalo’s abysmal reading scores

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 Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series. Our second installment: Poor reading skills are a problem nationwide, including in many of Buffalo’s suburbs.  Only two of the 48 tested fourth graders at Herman Badillo Bilingual Academy on the city’s West Side read at proficient levels in 2022. Likewise, just two fifth graders at School 53 on the East Side read at grade level. That’s out of 62 pupils tested. Not a single fifth grader at Martin Luther King Jr. School, in the shadow of the Fruit Belt neighborhood, tested at a proficient reading level in 2022.[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Feb 21

2023

Allegations of racism at Tesla plant

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Black employees at Tesla’s Gigafactory in South Buffalo have alleged they’re routinely subjected to racist treatment by managers, problems they say have persisted since the plant opened five years ago. Seven current and former Tesla employees, all of whom are Black, told Investigative Post the treatment they’ve experienced has ranged from offensive remarks to being repeatedly passed over for promotions. In one case, five employees recounted instances where groups of Black men were having conversations on the factory floor, only to be told by management they weren’t allowed to do that because “the optics looked bad” and they looked “like[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Feb 16

2023

Tesla a target of unionizing effort

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The union behind the successful effort to organize Starbucks, both here and nationally, is trying to do likewise at Tesla’s plant in South Buffalo. But, much like with Starbucks, organizers are squaring off with an employer with a history of aggressively fending off unionizing efforts. To wit, just one day after Tesla Workers United announced its organizing drive, Tesla fired 30 employees at its Buffalo plant, including some members of the union organizing team. They were dismissed via email Wednesday evening. “I strongly feel this is in retaliation to the committee announcement and it’s shameful,” Arian Berek, a fired worker[...]

Posted 1 month ago