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Sep 28

2022

Raises (but no reforms) for Buffalo police

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Buffalo police just got a raise. The city got nothing — no concessions, no reforms — in exchange. That’s the upshot of more than three years of negotiations between the Brown administration and the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, whose contract expired in July 2019. When talks stalled in early 2021, the dispute put in the hands of a state arbitrator, who was empowered only to deal with pay.  Reform — the mantra of demonstrators and elected officials alike in the summer of 2020 — was sidelined. On July 19, a state arbitration panel awarded Buffalo police raises and retroactive pay worth[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 26

2022

Podcast: Interview with Brian Higgins, part 2

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Geoff Kelly recently interviewed U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins about a variety of topics, including national politics, the Tops massacre and the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Congressman’s response, in so many words, involved what he sees as division. We posted the first half of the interview on Friday. You can watch that first part via our YouTube channel or listen to it as a podcast. Next up: an interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Toles.

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 26

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Get the news a day earlier by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, emailed every Sunday morning. The Pew Research Center has released new studies on how people get their news and how they use social media to access media sites. First, how people get their news. Online has overtaken television, at least for those under 50. Newspapers, well, they’re yesterday’s news; only 5 percent of people consider print their go-to source of news. Social media? Half of Americans use social media “often” or “sometimes” to follow the news. Interestingly enough, the share of people who use social media “often” is[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 23

2022

Podcast: Interview with Brian Higgins

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Geoff Kelly recently interviewed U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins about a variety of topics, including national politics, the Tops massacre and the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Congressman’s response, in so many words, involved what he sees as division. You can watch the first part of the interview via our YouTube channel or listen to it as a podcast. We’ll post the second half of the interview Monday. Next up: an interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Toles.

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 20

2022

Hochul has inflated number of stadium jobs

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Gov. Kathy Hochul and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz have repeatedly claimed that 10,000 jobs will be created during construction of the $1.4 billion stadium for the Buffalo Bills.  “I love the fact that this is the largest construction project in Western New York history with 10,000 union jobs,” Hochul said during a visit in April to Buffalo.   It appears, however, that the stadium project will create about 6,800 direct construction jobs statewide, not the 10,000 claimed by Hochul and Poloncarz. That lower estimate was included in an economic impact study commissioned by the Bills. Only by adding “indirect” and[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 19

2022

No relief for local taxpayers on Bills stadium

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Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz likes to say the new stadium deal he and Gov. Kathy Hochul cut with the Buffalo Bills gets the county “out of the football business.” The deal, however, does not get the county out of the business of paying for a football stadium.  The county’s annual costs for the Bills current home, Highmark Stadium, have ranged from $10.7 million to $12.6 million in recent years.  Estimates provided to county lawmakers for paying off bonds to cover the county’s share of new stadium construction have come in lower, between $7.7 million and $9 million annually. The latest[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 19

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Here’s what caught Jim Heaney’s eye last week. Subscribe to his WeeklyPost and you’ll receive his recommended reading, along with a recap of the previous week’s reporting by Investigative Post. Updated: 2:10 p.m. Newspaper print circulation is tumbling in Buffalo and across the nation. The hope of the industry is to make up for that lost ground by growing online readership. Now, Rick Edmunds, the media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, reports that, too, is shrinking. He wrote this last week: Pageviews and uniques are not the favored digital metrics they used to be, but as they fell roughly[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 15

2022

Big subsidies for luxury apartments

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State and local governments eagerly offering tax subsidies to a luxury, waterfront apartment project sounds like something out of a developer’s fantasy. But that’s exactly what’s happening in North Tonawanda. The Niagara County Industrial Development Agency on Wednesday unanimously approved — without debate — a $7.2 million subsidy package for a developer building 110 apartments along the Niagara River marketed as “luxurious living in elegant surroundings.” The project is a third phase of developer VisoneCo’s aims for the section of River Road just north of Tonawanda Island. The first, which is finished, features apartments, townhomes and commercial space. The second,[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post