Categories for Co-produced with WGRZ

Aug 26

2015

Labor groups protest hotel subsidies

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Around 100 people from local labor groups gathered Wednesday morning to protest the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency’s awarding of tax breaks to hotels. They say low-cost hotels like the Budget Inn on Niagara Falls Boulevard, where the protest was held, should not receive subsidies because they don’t create good-paying jobs. The protest was organized by the Coalition for Economic Justice. Investigative Post reported on the subsidies in January, documenting how the IDA’s indiscriminate granting of tax breaks to hotels defied the recommendations of a 2011 study commissioned by the state. That study found that the city had already had a “glut” of lower-end hotel[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Aug 25

2015

NRG closing Huntley coal plant in Tonawanda

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NRG Energy plans to retire its Huntley coal plant in Tonawanda by March. NRG informed its 79 employees at the River Road facility on Tuesday morning. “The market conditions don’t make the plant economically viable,” said NRG spokesman David Gaier. “We don’t see any scenario under which things will improve to allow the plant to remain in service.” At the same time, NRG’s $140 million project to convert and repower its coal plant in Dunkirk is in jeopardy. The conversion plan, approved last year, would allow the Dunkirk facility to burn both coal and natural gas. Now, that plant could be mothballed by January. On[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Aug 17

2015

Buffalo steps up recycling efforts

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Buffalo officials have finally launched what they are calling an “extensive public awareness campaign” in an effort to boost its anemic recycling rate. This campaign, announced Monday, comes almost three years after Investigative Post reported how the city had failed to spend more than $400,000 earmarked for recycling education and promotion. City officials said the goal is to exceed the national recycling rate of 34 percent by 2018. They have a long way to go. Buffalo will need to more than double its rate in three years to reach that goal. In 2012, the city introduced the green tote program, which allows residents to[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Aug 6

2015

Outer Harbor plans shrouded in secrecy

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The Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation is again the subject of transparency complaints over its planning effort for the Outer Harbor. Board member Sam Hoyt had said the state would unveil a revised development plan at two public meetings in April. The development corporation controls some 200 acres of lakefront at the Outer Harbor. But those public meetings never happened. Instead, Investigative Post has learned that state officials have held at least two secret brainstorming sessions. Some who attended had been critical of the state’s first Outer Harbor plan released last fall. That plan included up to 2,100 housing units, stores and restaurants. But Assemblyman Sean Ryan, U.S. Rep. Brian[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 30

2015

Poloncarz plays down problems at CPS

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For workers at Erie County Child Protective Services, high caseloads and missed deadlines have become the norm. But Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is adamant that the department no longer has any serious problems. “We’ve made great progress and we’re headed on the right track, there’s just always a little more work to be done,” Poloncarz said. County Legislators disagree. They voted 7-4 Thursday in favor of asking Poloncarz to personally discuss the performance of CPS at a special public meeting. But Poloncarz said he would not do so and dismissed today’s vote as “a political stunt.” The county executive, up for re-election in November, had ducked questions[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 28

2015

State relents on Buffalo Billion records

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I interrupt the state’s incessant stonewalling of my efforts to use public records to track the Buffalo Billion program to report some progress. Cuomo administration officials, for more than a year, refused to release documents related to the selection of LPCiminelli to develop SolarCity’s sprawling plant in South Buffalo. The SUNY Research Foundation and the Fort Schuyler Management Corp. went to great lengths to thwart my efforts to obtain records under the state Freedom of Information Law, as I documented in December. Alain Kaloyeros and his associates at Fort Schuyler wouldn’t budge when the state Committee on Open Government issued[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 23

2015

Child abuse unit still struggling

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Kim Henderson lasted a year as a caseworker investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect. She was assigned more cases than she felt she could handle. Many of the cases she inherited were poorly documented. And many of the families she was assigned to work with hadn’t seen a caseworker in months. Henderson quit her job with Erie County Child Protective Services two weeks ago, worried that too many families with children at risk weren’t getting the help they needed. “Sometimes the kids hadn’t been seen for months on end – it was terrible,” she said. Henderson’s experience is not[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 16

2015

Water woes at Gallagher Beach

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  Gallagher Beach has a serious bacteria problem. The bacteria counts at the unofficial beach on Buffalo’s Outer Harbor – which local, state and federal officials want to open for public swimming – exceeded safe levels more than two-thirds of the time in tests conducted last summer. The test results are included in a 181-page study Investigative Post recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request. The state has not officially released the report to the public. “The results are that this is not a safe place to swim,” said John Finster, a retired public health engineer who used[...]

Posted 10 years ago
Investigative Post