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Jun 3

2025

Protesting city inaction on lead poisoning

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Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good (center) joined by community advocates and state elected officials Jon Rivera (left) and April Baskin (right). Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel Local housing advocates and elected officials are condemning Buffalo’s failure to spend over three-quarters of a $2 million federal grant dedicated to removing toxic lead paint from city homes.  Meanwhile, proposed state legislation aims to pressure landlords to clean their property of lead when identified by housing inspectors.  Investigative Post reported last week that the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency to date has only spent  $479,481 of the $2[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Jun 2

2025

Incompetency and arrogance in service to cruelty

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Below is the complete verion of WeeklyPost, the newsletter we send via email on Sunday mornings. Our Monday Morning Read typically includes a portion of that newsletter; today, we’re publishing it in its entirety. If you don’t already subscribe, you can do so here. ICE did it again. Back in March it deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in defiance of a court order, an action that generated international attention and condemnation. ICE officials said the deportation was the result of an “administrative error.” Not that they’ve attempted to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States. Well, ICE[...]

Posted 4 weeks 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 1 month ago

May 29

2025

More bad budgeting from Buffalo politicians

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Writing about the City of Buffalo’s finances is like watching the movie Groundhog Day, but the wheel of suffering never stops turning.  Before the story reaches its happy-ever-after conclusion, the film rewinds to the beginning. Again and again, year after year. The Common Council on Tuesday adopted, with few minor amendments, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s proposed budget for the city’s upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1.  The $622 million plan recycles many of the fiscal sins of the Byron Brown administration, whose specious revenue and expense projections yielded deficit after deficit — backfilled first with cash from the city’s[...]

Posted 1 month ago

May 28

2025

Police lawsuits push city budget into deficit

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Buffalo City Hall. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel. Settlements for police-related lawsuits continue to be a drag on Buffalo’s finances. Recent payouts threaten to create a deficit in the city’s current fiscal year that ends June 30, according to the city comptroller, at a time when the city has no reserves available to plug budget holes. Currently before the Common Council are two such settlements totaling $1.3 million. The bigger of the two is a $1.1 million to James Kistner, an East Side man who on New Year’s Day 2017 saw two police cars parked in front of a rental property[...]

Posted 1 month 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 1 month ago

May 27

2025

City inaction on lead endangers federal funding

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The City of Buffalo has spent only a quarter of the $2 million in federal funds it has received to abate lead hazards in houses and apartments. Now, the program is coming to an end with less than two months to commit the remaining money before it has to be returned to the federal government. The Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, which administers the grant, set a goal of remediating 110 residences when it received the funds in 2021. Four years later, only 18 units have been abated. The city last year received a one-year extension for the program from the[...]

Posted 1 month ago

May 26

2025

The right’s double standard on free speech

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Today’s topic: free speech. It’s under siege. The right to protest. The right to publish. The right to speak your mind. Donald Trump is leading the charge, supported by his army of MAGA quislings.  Let me put the hypocrisy in context.  American Nazis and their ilk have long exercised their First Amendment rights.  Remember when the ACLU went to court to defend the rights of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, back in 1977. Or, more recently, the “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. You know, the one where marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us!” Few[...]

Posted 1 month ago
Investigative Post