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Jul 31

2022

Monday Morning Read

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You could have read this – and more – yesterday if you subscribed to WeeklyPost, our free weekly newsletter. You can subscribe here. The Buffalo News has a new editor. The paper is making a big deal out of the fact Sheila Rayam is the first person of color to serve as editor, and it is noteworthy, particularly  given The News’ lack of diversity, especially in its management ranks. Rayam joins The News after a 15-month stint at the daily newspaper in Utica. The Utica Observer-Dispatch has a newsroom staff of only a dozen journalists, so she faces the challenge of[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 31

2022

Feds investigate City Hall (again)

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 Federal investigators are looking into allegations that City of Buffalo employees, including police officers, broke federal law last year while campaigning for Mayor Byron Brown. Investigative Post acquired two emails last week concerning the investigation.  The first, dated June 12 of this year, is a formal complaint to the U.S Office of Special Counsel, alleging “officers of the Buffalo Police Department … appear to have engaged in political activity while on duty or while represented as police officers.”  The second, dated July 11, is an email from a law clerk at the Office of Special Counsel to the author of[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 27

2022

Byron Brown’s campaign debts

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Mayor Byron Brown’s campaign committee owes vendors more than $185,000 for goods and services they provided to his re-election effort last year. That’s according to the committee’s latest filing with the state Board of Elections, which covers all financial activity between Jan. 15 and July 11. Brown for Buffalo owes more than three times as much as it has cash on hand, according to that report. It owes more than four times what the mayor reported raising over the past six months. The mayor’s campaign committee lists the debts as “outstanding liabilities/loans,” but most appear to be unpaid invoices. According[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 25

2022

Buffalo is slowly losing its trees

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 Buffalo is cutting down twice as many trees as it’s planting. And residents are noticing the loss. “It’s nothing like when I was a child,” said Catherine Faust, a Highland Avenue resident in the city’s Elmwood Village.  From 2016 through 2020, the city cut down more than 4,300 trees. They only planted about 1,900 new ones.  An Investigative Post analysis found the rate of tree loss is greater in parts of the East Side. Masten District, for example, lost four times as many trees as were planted. “It is one of the most despicable things that I can imagine[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 24

2022

A most unreasonable demand

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I’ve never heard of such a thing: elected officials being asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement to preclude them from discussing public policy. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is making the demand of three county legislators who would serve on a committee to consider, at long last, a community benefits agreement tied to the construction of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. The county executive wants those negotiations, much like talks involving the stadium, to be held in secret. Public policy should not be negotiated behind closed doors. This is yet another example of Poloncarz kowtowing to the Pegulas and thumbing[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 20

2022

Hardwick demands answers from OTB

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For the first time, one of the governments that owns the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. is demanding answers about the agency’s management practices and business dealings. Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick sent two letters this week to Henry Wojtaszek, OTB’s president and CEO. One letter posed a series of questions about the agency’s practice of providing top-shelf health insurance to board members, despite repeated warnings that doing so is impermissible. It’s a subject Investigative Post has covered extensively, in more than two dozen stories published over four years.  Hardwick’s other letter raised questions about OTB’s sale of land to[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 19

2022

Council adopts new district lines

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On Tuesday, Buffalo’s Common Council voted unanimously to adopt a redistricting plan that community groups and activists have spent the past two months trying to stop. The new district maps comprise an amended version of a redistricting plan unveiled in May by a citizens commission whose members were appointed by the Council and Mayor Byron Brown. The plan — which largely leaves intact the gerrymandering of a decade ago — will now be sent to Brown. The mayor must hold a public hearing on the matter. He then can approve or veto the plan, or allow it to pass into[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 18

2022

Investigative Post adds a reporter

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J. Dale Shoemaker has joined the reporting staff of Investigative Post. A native of central Pennsylvania, he most recently reported for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He worked for three years with PublicSource, a nonprofit news organization in Pittsburgh after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as managing editor of The Pitt News, the student newspaper which publishes daily. He also served a stint as reporter at the Newark Star-Ledger. Shoemaker’s reporting for PublicSource prompted Pittsburgh to pass a transparency law for city contracts that requires the release of additional information on spending prior[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post