Investigative Post

Western New York is saddled with a lot of bad governmental bodies and departments in need of reform. Some cost a lot of money in the form of high taxes, others are simply ineffective, and still more are outright corrupt. There are some 105 units of local government in Erie and Niagara counties — that […]

Donald Trump’s presidency is about to be past tense. What should our post-Trump politics look like? Joe Biden hopes it’s a time of healing. Conciliation is in his blood and I won’t blame him for trying. But good luck with that. More than 70 million Americans voted for Trump and I question if there’s more […]

Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a column that published in the current issue of Buffalo Spree. It wasn’t long after Byron Brown was re-elected to a fourth term that talk started circulating around City Hall of a “Drive for Five.” As in, a fifth term. Talk quieted down, at least until the […]

I’m not old enough to remember the Kennedy-Nixon cliffhanger of 1960. Bush-Gore, yes. But as a stomach churner, nothing comes close to the ongoing Biden-Trump election. I think most Democrats and Republicans can agree with that – if nothing else. With that said, let me offer some random notes: It’s mostly overlooked, but worth noting, […]

Editor’s note: This column originally published in Buffalo Spree. Chris Jacobs used to be a moderate Republican who Democrats could think about voting for. No more. Not if you go by his words. The moderate Chris Jacobs made a deal with the devil in accepting the endorsement of Donald Trump during his successful special election […]

These are tough times, as tough times go. And they’re not going away anytime soon.  The COVID-19 pandemic remains a dual threat, to both public health and economic well being of the county, Buffalo and Western New York included.  While the coronavirus is under control locally, at least compared with much of the rest of […]

The audit released Friday by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli told us a lot of things we already knew or strongly suspected: the Cuomo administration failed to assess the value of high-tech projects like the Tesla plant in South Buffalo both before and after the investment of tax dollars, and largely kept the public and press […]

This story began in April with a handful of simple questions: How many Buffalo school students are participating in distance learning? How many hours a day are they engaged in learning? And how much are they really learning? They were obvious and reasonable questions. So we posed them to the folks who run the school […]