Categories for In-Depth

Jun 11

2025

Political profile: Anthony Tyson-Thompson

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Mayor candidate Anthony Tyson-Thompson Anthony Tyson-Thompson is to many voters the least familiar of the five candidates running in the June 24 Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor.  He was the last candidate to join the field, skipping the party’s months-long endorsement process and announcing his candidacy in mid-April, just two weeks before nominating petitions were due. His campaign is largely self-funded, he said, and it shows. He has few campaign signs around the city, no ads and no mailers — just social media. The East Side native is also the youngest mayoral candidate, at 34, with the least experience in[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jun 6

2025

Concerning contributions to Scanlon campaign

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Under city law, one of Buffalo’s largest paving contractors could have been fined and barred from bidding on lucrative contracts because of its admission to wage theft. Instead, the Common Council, despite reservations and headed by then-President Chris Scanlon, awarded D&H Paving $6.9 million in work last July.  At the time, the lawmakers expressed concern that D&H Paving was under investigation by the state Department of Labor. That probe, the state’s second into D&H, resulted in a nearly $28,000 fine and a finding that the company’s violations were “willful.” In the midst of the Council’s deliberation, the company’s owner, Michael[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jun 5

2025

Where Ryan stands on the issues

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State Sen. Sean Ryan at a May 30 press conference in Lafayette Square. This is the second of two stories on mayoral hopeful Sean Ryan. On Wednesday we published a political profile. Sean Ryan doesn’t lack for ideas on how to fix what he sees as dysfunction in City Hall and the impact it has had on neighborhoods across Buffalo. “We can’t do the basics. We’re not delivering basic services for our people. And that’s not even scratching the surface on our systemic problems,” he told Investigative Post. “The neglect is becoming more and more apparent. Can’t plow our roads,[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jun 4

2025

Sean Ryan: a political profile

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State Sen. Sean Ryan at a May 30 press conference in Lafayette Square.  This is the first of two stories on mayoral hopeful Sean Ryan. On Thursday we published a  story on where he stands on the issues.  State Sen. Sean Ryan has a long history of advancing progressive causes, both in his 14 years as a state legislator and in his prior career as an attorney. He’s championed urban highway removal, affordable housing, living wage ordinances, tax subsidy reforms and a host of other issues that reflect the priorities of the heavily Democratic districts he’s represented in Albany.   Now,[...]

Posted 5 months ago

May 30

2025

Another ICE deportation in defiance of court order

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For at least the second time since President Donald Trump took office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deported a migrant in defiance of federal judges — this time a Salvadoran man long held in detention in Western New York. The Trump administration’s most recent action occurred May 7. That morning, a panel of federal judges with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City granted the man, Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, permission to remain in the United States while his immigration case wound its way through the courts.  Twenty-eight minutes later, however, Melgar-Salmeron was on an ICE Air flight from[...]

Posted 5 months ago

May 28

2025

Detained immigrant family emigrates to Canada

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Marcos, Aracely, Madelin and Itzayana on the Rainbow Bridge. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. A Salvadoran family previously detained for weeks in a makeshift cell at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls and separated by ICE has successfully emigrated to Canada and been reunited in Toronto. The mother and her two children were admitted May 5. The father followed them two weeks later, after he was first detained at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Batavia and later released to the Vive shelter on Main Street in Buffalo. Local advocates who assisted the family said it’s a rare[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Apr 8

2025

Tesla spends taxpayer ‘slush fund’ on new cafeteria

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When Tesla employees show up to work nowadays in South Buffalo, a cafeteria serving breakfast, lunch and dinner — along with snacks and coffee — awaits. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch: Tesla employees must pay for the meals, which include salads, pasta, pizza and sandwiches. The other catch? New York State taxpayers have footed the bill for the eatery, which cost $1.6 million to build. Records obtained by Investigative Post show the electric vehicle maker continues to spend taxpayer dollars each year on the factory, which the state spent $959 million to build and equip. The[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Mar 27

2025

A new approach to East Side development

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Henry Louis Taylor of UB presents plans for Census Tract 166. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel Census Tract 166 — an economically devastated community situated in the heart of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood — will be ground zero for a new approach to revitalizing the East Side. The census tract is peppered with 1,300 vacant lots, more than any other neighborhood in the city.  Only 25 percent of its adult residents work, according to 2022 US census estimates. More than a quarter of its households live below the poverty level. Henry Taylor, director of the University at Buffalo’s Center for Urban Studies,[...]

Posted 7 months ago
Investigative Post