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May 29

2019

Investigative Post is hiring reporters

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Investigative Post, a nonprofit investigative reporting center in Buffalo, N.Y., is looking for two experienced reporters to join our award-winning team. We’re looking for reporters with at least five years of experience and  a track record of producing compelling, high-impact stories. Good writing skills are a must; data skills a plus. We produce stories for online, television, radio and print; applicants with a newspaper background will get plenty of help learning broadcasting skills. And if you’re a television investigative reporter, by all means apply. Salary commensurate with experience and skills; compensation includes health insurance and retirement plan. Send cover letter,[...]

Posted 7 years ago

May 21

2019

The cost of suspending driver’s licenses

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 A “staggering” number of motorists across the state, including Western New York, lose their driver’s license every year. The state suspends more than a half-million annually; the count in Erie County approaches 26,000. Drivers can lose their license without violating traffic laws. Failure to pay state taxes or make child support payments are among the offenses that can result in a driver losing their license. Still, nearly two-thirds of suspensions result from the failure to pay traffic tickets or show up in court in response to getting one. In theory, losing a license keeps drivers off the road. But national studies[...]

Posted 7 years ago

May 20

2019

City Hall’s looming fiscal reckoning

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A malfunctioning fire alarm rang shrill and unrelenting on the 13th floor of City Hall last Thursday morning, contributing to an hour-and-a-half delay of the Common Council’s special session to adopt its amendments to Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed 2019-2020 budget. Maybe the universe was trying to tell the Common Council something about that budget. If it was, they weren’t listening. Once it began, the meeting took about 10 minutes. The result: The Council moved some money around various budget lines in order to fund projects and purchases dear to each member’s heart, but left Brown’s budget essentially intact. This, despite[...]

Posted 7 years ago

May 16

2019

Another Buffalo Billion project is struggling

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There were supposed to be almost 500 jobs created by now. Instead, there are just 51. An ambitious economic development project at the University of Buffalo, intended to bolster the region’s biotech sector and create high-tech jobs, is years behind its original schedule and coming up short on its hiring goals. The Buffalo Institute for Genomics and Data Analytics, funded with almost $50 million in state grants as part of the Buffalo Billion initiative, was launched five years ago and remains a work in progress. The project was originally supposed to create 490 jobs by January of this year. That[...]

Posted 7 years ago

May 16

2019

Lawyers tell OTB to ditch the perks

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A prominent law firm has told the board of the Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. that its members should not be helping themselves to free health, dental and vision insurance. “We recommend that Western region directors no longer accept health insurance benefits,” lawyers for the firm of Barclay Damon wrote in a March 26 opinion obtained by Investigative Post and the Niagara Gazette. The opinion cited caps on board compensation established in state law and previous rulings made by the state Comptroller and Attorney General. Attorneys for Barclay Damon also cautioned that board members may face financial penalties if the[...]

Posted 7 years ago

May 14

2019

Kelly discusses Buffalo’s risky budget on WBFO

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Geoff Kelly’s current “PoliticalPost” blog details the risky assumptions Mayor Byron Brown has built into his proposed city budget. Kelly discussed those concerns on WBFO’s Press Pass.  

Posted 7 years ago

May 10

2019

Mayor Brown’s risky budget assumptions

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There is little fat in Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed 2019-2020 budget, as befits a city where, despite aspirational talk of a renaissance, population is stagnant and job growth and real wages trail national averages. However, that word aspirational also applies to some projected revenue streams on which Brown’s budget relies. Other words and phrases come to mind, too, such as tentative, maybe, never going to happen, and zombie. Below is a quick look at some of those revenue projections, totaling about $20 million of the $508 million budget. (Today, the office of  interim City Comptroller Barbara Miller Williams released its[...]

Posted 7 years ago

May 9

2019

Legislators propose changes on traffic laws

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In just over two years, New York State issued nearly 1.7 million driver’s license suspensions to more than 620,000 drivers — a disproportionate number of them poor, people of color or both. These suspensions were not the result of reckless or drunken driving, or other dangerous behavior; they were slapped on drivers who failed to pay a traffic ticket fine or show up for a court date over it. These numbers come from an analysis released on Wednesday by Driven By Justice, a statewide coalition that worked with state Sen. Tim Kennedy on a bill to end the practice of[...]

Posted 7 years ago
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