Categories for News

Aug 7

2019

Progress on fair housing front

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Editor’s note: This is the last story Charlotte Keith wrote for Investigative Post. She joined The Philadelphia Inquirer in July. A recent change in state law offers new protections for thousands of Western New York residents who receive federal housing vouchers, offering a way to pursue discrimination complaints without relying on the City of Buffalo’s flawed system. The new measure — included in the state budget that passed in March — means landlords can no longer refuse to rent to someone because they rely on government assistance to help pay rent. Buffalo already had a local law in place prohibiting[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jul 15

2019

Brown denies Buffalo’s fiscal woes

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 Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown refused to talk with Investigative Post about the city’s fiscal plight for a story published last week, but he couldn’t dodge WGRZ’s Dave McKinley. The mayor’s response, included in a story that aired Monday, was a mix of arguing semantics and making misleading statements about city reserves. And, as if to underscore her lack of independence from the mayor, City Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams issued a press release intended to assure the public that all is well with city finances. This wasn’t the first time she attempted to cover for Brown during her brief tenure in office.[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jun 27

2019

Lawsuit seeks to stop downtown project

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Developer Rocco Termini and several businesses that operate out of his company’s downtown properties filed a lawsuit last week against the City of Buffalo and Ciminelli Real Estate Corp., seeking to hit pause on Ciminelli’s most-recent plan to develop a city-owned surface parking lot at 201 Ellicott Street. The Ciminelli plan entails 200 apartments and condominiums, plus a grocery store and food distribution terminal run by Braymiller Market, based in Hamburg. Braymiller is also named in the lawsuit.  The 2.5-acre site is across Ellicott Street from Termini’s Hotel @ The Lafayette. The downtown public library is to its north; the[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jun 6

2019

State accredits Buffalo police

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The Buffalo Police Department has finally been accredited by outside evaluators. The City Charter requires such accreditation, but the department had long ignored the mandate. That changed when Investigative Post reported the requirement in January 2017. Since then, police officials have been working with a division of the state Department of Criminal Justice to review practices and policies. A state panel approved the accreditation at a meeting Thursday morning. Most police departments seek the accreditation, which is good for five years. The objective is to improve the professionalism and efficiency of departments.

Posted 6 years ago

Jun 6

2019

Buffalo comptroller flip flops

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 On Tuesday morning, the Buffalo Common Council’s Legislation Committee expected a visit from interim Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams. Miller-Williams had been invited to explain why she had issued a second, amended evaluation of Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed budget for the fiscal year 2019-2020. She didn’t show on Tuesday morning. Instead, Miller-Williams sent a deputy and her special assistant — newly hired out of the mayor’s budget office — to tell the committee that she had decided, upon further review, to withdraw the second budget response and go with the first one. You can read about the first report here and here, and[...]

Posted 6 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 6 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 6 years ago

Apr 25

2019

Tesla reports big losses

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Tesla reported first quarter losses Wednesday of $702 million. What’s worse, Tesla reported a big drop in its solar business. Solar panel installations dropped by more than one third during the first quarter. Installations are down five-fold since peaking in 2015. Its market share has tumbled in recent years from 33 to 9 percent. All this is bad news for Tesla’s plant in South Buffalo, which was built and equipped at taxpayer expense. A slump in solar sales lessens demand for the products produced at the plant. That, in turn, could make it tough for Tesla to create all the jobs[...]

Posted 6 years ago
Investigative Post