Categories for Featured

May 7

2019

iPost announces three summer events

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Investigative Post has scheduled three events for this summer, capped by its popular benefit concert at Sportsmen’s Tavern featuring Tom Toles and The Outlyers. The Aug. 16 show will cap a summer that also includes two speaker panels at Big Ditch Brewing.  On Tuesday, June 4, Geoff Kelly, former editor of The Public and Artvoice, will discuss the past, present and future of the alternative press in Buffalo.  On Wednesday, July 17, two Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonists, Toles and Adam Zyglis of the Buffalo News, will discuss their craft and current affairs at Big Ditch. Toles, editorial cartoonist with The[...]

Posted 6 years ago

May 1

2019

Buffalo lags on addressing lead poisoning

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 Hundreds of young children living in Buffalo’s inner-city neighborhoods continue to be diagnosed every year with lead poisoning. And City Hall continues to do next to nothing about it. “Buffalo has not made as much progress as other communities have and not as much progress as perhaps they could,” said Andrew McLellan, president of Environmental Education Associates, which trains contractors and others to recognize and remediate lead hazards. Thirteen months ago, the Center for Governmental Research, a consulting firm in Rochester, developed an action plan with 19 recommendations for the city, county and state to adopt. The county has[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Apr 26

2019

FBI investigating Buffalo-area OTB

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The FBI is investigating the awarding of lucrative contracts by the Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. to politically wired companies. The investigation, confirmed by multiple sources, is looking into contracts involving firms with ties to OTB Chairman Richard Bianchi, a member of the Monroe County Conservative Party’s executive committee, and CEO Henry Wojtaszek, former chairman of the Niagara County Republican Committee. The full scope of the probe is unclear and an FBI spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny the investigation. But sources told Investigative Post that it includes, at a minimum, contracts the OTB has awarded to at least[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Apr 10

2019

State faults surgeon at Children’s Hospital

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A prominent pediatric surgeon who serves as the director of trauma at John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital is currently on probation after being charged last year with professional misconduct – including gross negligence and incompetence – by the state Department of Health. The health department charged that Dr. Kathryn Bass “deviated from accepted standards of care or failed to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent pediatric surgeon would have exercised under similar circumstances,” in the treatment of five patients between 2010 and 2012. In one case, the charges say, Bass performed a colostomy on a six-year-old, using the wrong[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Mar 21

2019

String of violations at Buffalo plant

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 The former American Brass plant on Military Road in North Buffalo keeps getting cited for federal and state environmental and safety violations. The plant, now owned by the German company Aurubis AG, is over a million square feet and home to 650 workers. It produces about 160,000 tons of metal each year for use in cars, batteries, ammunition and zippers.  Last year, state regulators fined the company $35,500 for 15 violations involving the  mishandling of hazardous waste. The violations resulted in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declaring Aurubis a “significant non-complier” between 2016 and 2018. Three times since 2011,[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Mar 15

2019

Key witness in ‘Billion case avoids prison

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 Kevin Schuler, the prosecution’s star witness in the Buffalo Billion corruption trial, escaped a prison term at his sentencing in Manhattan on Friday. Schuler was an executive at LPCiminelli who detailed the bid rigging scheme that resulted in the company landing the contract to build the SolarCity plant in South Buffalo. His testimony was key to convicting his former boss, Louis Ciminelli, and a top state economic development official, Alain Kaloyeros, on corruption charges. Both were sentenced to prison, although they remain free pending appeals. Schuler is required to perform 400 hours of community service over the next two[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Mar 6

2019

OTB protecting its perks

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The regional Off Track Betting Corporation has a story – two stories, actually – and they’re sticking to them. Officials there continue to insist that the OTB is authorized to provide health, dental and vision insurance free of charge to its board of directors. Gold-plated insurance, described to me by one health insurance expert as “literally the richest plan available.” I reported in December that the state Attorney General issued an opinion in 2008 that appears to conclude that OTBs are not permitted to provide health insurance coverage to board members. President Henry Wojtaszek responded by pledging to ask the[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Feb 27

2019

City Hall cashing in on traffic tickets

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 First, City Hall talked the state into allowing it to keep most of the money from traffic tickets issued by Buffalo police. Police then started handing out tickets in record numbers, jumping from around 32,000 in the year before the Buffalo Traffic Violations Agency was created in 2015 to more than 52,000 the year after. Since then, police have written far more tickets for tinted windows than for speeding or running red lights and stop signs. Revenues soared accordingly—up from around $500,000 in the year before the traffic agency was created, to more than $2.8 million in the fiscal[...]

Posted 6 years ago
Investigative Post