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Sep 4

2022

Monday Morning Read

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We’ve launched a redesigned website. It builds off the strength of our previous website — easy navigation and a clean, uncluttered design — and adds more visuals and features that point readers to our best work. Our upgrade was informed by market research performed in partnership with the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. They surveyed recipients of WeeklyPost, who said, among other things, that they wanted more graphics, photos and video clips embedded into stories, and guides to direct them to stories by topic. I find the websites of most news outlets to be cluttered messes. We[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 2

2022

Inside Amazon’s massive subsidy in Niagara

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Robert Taylor, a lifelong Niagara County resident, is thinking about moving south. Probably Florida. But Taylor isn’t chasing the warm weather and low property taxes that have drawn tens of thousands of other Northerners to the South. Rather, he’s running away from something.  Amazon.  The online retail giant plans to open a 3-million-square-foot warehouse less than a mile from his Packard Road home in the Town of Niagara. Amazon plans to employ 1,000 people at the warehouse and hundreds of cars and trucks will travel to and from the facility daily. The warehouse will be a “first mile” distribution center[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Aug 31

2022

Buffalo cop in hot water again

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Last summer, Buffalo Police Officer Richard Hy — a.k.a. the “Angry Cop,” notorious for posting satirical videos online — is accused of letting his anger get the best of him. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state Supreme Court, Curtis Lee Dean, of Buffalo, claims Hy intentionally backed his patrol car into Dean’s motorcycle at the corner of Delaware Avenue and Edward Street in June 2021. Dean was riding with a group of motorcyclists, whom Hy decided to pursue several blocks through the city’s West Side, according to a WGRZ News report on the incident.  Some riders took off to[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Aug 29

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading – and more – a day early. Well, I suppose we should talk about Matt Araiza, the so-called Punt God drafted, signed and given a roster spot by our Buffalo Bills. It turns out he’s also an accused rapist. And, as a result, a former Bill, as of Saturday night. The obvious questions are when did the Bills find out about the accusation and how could they have allowed the situation to get as far as it did? Team officials initially claimed they did a thorough investigation, but the accuser’s[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Aug 24

2022

Subsidies for South Buffalo pot farm

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Updated: 1:46 p.m. A pot growing operation in South Buffalo has received two major subsidies from economic development agencies. The first, in January, came from the New York Power Authority, which approved an allocation of 2.9 megawatts of discounted hydropower. That equates to $3.5 million in savings over 10 years, based on 2021 energy prices, a NYPA spokesman told Investigative Post. The second subsidy came Wednesday from the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, which approved tax breaks worth $3.1 million over 15 years.  It’s the first subsidy the IDA has awarded to a marijuana producer and the second largest tax-break[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Aug 23

2022

Just how rich is Carl Paladino?

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  Carl Paladino, who says he’ll be “a voice for the people” in Congress, waited until the Friday before election day to tell voters how rich he is. Spoiler alert: He’s very rich. Paladino’s income was at least $4.5 million last year, according to a personal financial disclosure he filed last Friday with the U.S. House Ethics Committee. The outer limit of his income was seven times greater. In addition, he listed assets worth as much as $86 million. The Republican real-estate developer was a month late in filing the disclosure statement, required of all candidates running for federal office.[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Aug 21

2022

If Henry Wojtaszek was Pinocchio

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Here’s the latest recommended reading – and this week, viewing – from Jim Heaney. Subscribe to his Sunday email newsletter and you’ll get the news a day earlier, along with a recap of Investigative Post’s reporting from the previous week. Updated: 12:22 p.m. Henry Wojtaszek, the embattled CEO of the embattled Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., took the unusual step of answering questions from a reporter last week. He appeared Wednesday on WGRZ’s 5:30 p.m. newscast. Michael Wooten asked the right questions and Wojtaszek, well, let’s just say if he was Pinocchio, his nose would have been very long by the[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Aug 17

2022

Police union pressing to suppress records

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Buffalo’s police union is making headway in its efforts to put a lid on the release of officers’ disciplinary records. Last Friday, lawyers for the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association filed a lawsuit against the City of Buffalo, asking a judge to order the city to honor an arbitrator’s decision curtailing the public’s right to learn about allegations of police misconduct. If successful, the lawsuit would require the city to destroy all records of a misconduct complaint against an officer unless the department’s Internal Affairs Division finds the officer guilty.  That would eliminate records of almost all complaints and the investigations[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post