Categories for Featured

Apr 26

2021

Spiraling costs at remote industrial park

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The bill is coming due for putting an industrial park in the hinterlands of Genesee County and the cost to taxpayers is considerable. The Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park, being built on 1,250 acres in the rural Town of Alabama, flunked the state’s smart growth test when first proposed.  The project’s location rated so poorly that it failed to meet seven of ten smart growth criteria under the state’s own grading system, prompting one good government group to label it a “poster child for location inefficiency.” Empire State Development Corp. nevertheless approved spending state tax dollars to develop the[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Apr 21

2021

Reformers pushing for police referendum

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They’ve lost hope that Buffalo’s elected officials will make the police reforms activists have advocated since last summer. So a coalition of groups and individuals is seeking to bypass City Hall entirely and take one of those reforms directly to voters.  The coalition seeks to put a referendum on this November’s general election ballot. The referendum would create a new police review commission with the power to investigate complaints against officers, mete out discipline and review departmental policies and budgets. It’s a recommendation put forth last June by the Buffalo Police Advisory Board, one of three police oversight bodies in[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Apr 19

2021

Profane, suspended police lieutenant retires

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 Lieutenant Michael DeLong, suspended last summer after being videotaped directing a vile, misogynist insult at a woman outside a West Side convenience store, has retired. DeLong called the woman a “disrespectful little fucking cunt” when she questioned how police were handling a man in distress outside the store who has a history of drug and mental health issues. The woman, Ruweyda Salim, a claims examiner for the Veterans Administration at the time, captured her exchange with DeLong on her cell phone camera outside a 7 Eleven convenience store on Prospect Avenue near D’Youville College.  The video generated a lot[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Apr 14

2021

Paltry donations to Cuomo from WNY

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 Governor Andrew Cuomo has invested a lot of political capital — to say nothing of state tax dollars, starting with the Buffalo Billion — in Western New York. But an analysis by Investigative Post has found he’s not getting much love in return from local campaign donors. As first reported in our Money in Politics, and reported Wednesday on WGRZ, Cuomo’s campaign committee has raised $38.4 million statewide since 2017, which includes his last run for governor. Only $576,945 came from donors in Western New York. That’s only 1.5 percent of total donations. Investigative Post found one donor —[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Apr 6

2021

Exemptions boost Buffalo graduation rate

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Buffalo School Superintendent Kriner Cash was ecstatic. The city’s high school graduation rate last year jumped 11.6 percent – eight times greater than the increase statewide. Cash proclaimed he was “extraordinarily proud of the Class of 2020,” terming the increased graduation rate in the midst of the pandemic “a tremendous positive.” Left unsaid: 22 percent of the graduating class – 423 students – was exempted from passing mandated Regents exams, which had been cancelled because of the pandemic. Instead, students needed only to receive a passing grade in their individual classes, and the district adopted a generous grading policy to[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Mar 17

2021

The mother of all subsidy deals

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At a cost of $4 million per job, the subsidy deal designed to bring the first tenant to a vacant industrial park in rural Genesee County would be the richest in Western New York history.  Plug Power is in line for an estimated $269.5 million in tax breaks and power discounts in exchange for building a plant that would create 68 jobs.  The cost per job dwarfs other local subsidy deals. Subsidies for a data center built nearly a decade ago in Lockport worked out to more than $2 million a job. Government money invested in the Tesla solar plant[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Mar 1

2021

Cancer plagues West Valley nuke workers

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David Pyles says he lives on painkillers and moves with the help of a cane and walker. He worked for five years at the West Valley Demonstration Project, a failed experiment to process spent nuclear fuel. “What we were doing was insane. We were dealing with so much radiation,” he told Investigative Post from his home in New Hampshire.  “I’ve got absolutely no joints left in my knees — my knees are gone, my ankles are gone and my hips are gone,” he said.  “I wonder if it’s from working in that bathtub full of radiation.” Pyles was one of[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Feb 24

2021

Pandemic has hollowed out downtown Buffalo

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Empty offices. Empty restaurants. Empty parking ramps. Empty downtown. “I’ve never seen downtown Buffalo so empty in all the years I’ve been here,” said Mike Schmand, executive director of Buffalo Place, who has worked for the organization since 1982.  The numbers are bleak.  Schmand estimates one-third of the downtown workforce is working remotely. Metro Rail trips have declined by 35 percent. Revenue at city parking facilities has dropped 39 percent over the final six months of 2020 and is expected to remain below pre-COVID levels through at least the first half of this year.  Widespread vaccinations may offer a fresh[...]

Posted 4 years ago
Investigative Post