Investigative Post

Several years ago, the Cuomo administration spent $55 million of state taxpayer money to buy, renovate and equip seven floors of a downtown Buffalo office building to bring IBM to town. The payoff, we were told, would be 500 good-paying software engineering jobs and the start of a technology hub with all sorts of spin-off […]

An investment firm with a reputation of buying and gutting newspapers has just bought a stake in Lee Enterprises, which is purchasing The Buffalo News in a deal scheduled to close in March. What’s more, the firm, MNG Enterprises, is reportedly trying to engineer discussions about a mega-merger of newspaper chains, including Lee, Tribune Publishing, […]

It’s rarely, if ever, a good thing when a chain buys a newspaper. And so it is with the surprise announcement today that The Buffalo News is being sold to Lee Enterprises, one of the larger newspaper chains in the country. We can expect cuts to an already depleted newsroom if Lee’s track record at […]

The November local elections are behind us and the national chaos of 2020 is right around the corner. (Like winter, it can’t end soon enough.) This seems like a good time to take stock of our elected officials in Western New York. But first, allow me to hold my nose. I’ve been reporting in this […]

The regional Off Track Betting Corporation has a story – two stories, actually – and they’re sticking to them. Officials there continue to insist that the OTB is authorized to provide health, dental and vision insurance free of charge to its board of directors. Gold-plated insurance, described to me by one health insurance expert as […]

Hold up a gas station and you’re looking at a minimum of five years in prison. Get napped with an ounce of crack and the mandatory minimum is five to ten years. Engage in bid rigging, and in the process violate the public’s trust and cost taxpayers potentially million of dollars? If you’re Louis Ciminelli, […]

A lot of issues scream for reform in Albany: ethics, campaign finance, cash bail. But nothing rivals state contracting practices, not in the wake of the corruption convictions of Alain Kaloyeros and three developers who contributed heavily to Andrew Cuomo’s gubernatorial campaign, including Lou Ciminelli of Buffalo. Yet here we are, 21 months after the […]

Alain Kaloyeros has been known as many things during his career. Dr. K. Near genius. Nanotech guru. And as of Thursday, convicted criminal. Ditto for Lou Ciminelli. Civic leader. Power broker. Philanthropist. And yes, convicted felon. Down the list of defendants we go. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. And, at the risk of repeating myself, guilty. It […]