Categories for Outrages & Insights

Mar 24

2015

Cuomo still stonewalling on Buffalo Billion

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The Cuomo administration has redoubled its efforts to suppress the release of documents that disclose how it is selecting developers and spending money on the Buffalo Billion program. The Fort Schuyler Management Corp., charged with managing the program, is still refusing to release information sought by Investigative Post despite a legal opinion recently issued by the State Committee on Open Government that concluded the agency is subject to the Freedom of Information Law. “In my opinion, it is cut and dried,” said Robert Freeman, the committee’s executive director. “It is, in essence, a governmental agency, that it is required to[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Mar 10

2015

Council’s slow motion response to murder crisis

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Steve Brown and I reported five weeks ago that Buffalo has a serious murder problem. Our city’s homicide rate is among the highest in the nation — and the solve rate is among the worst. Over the past five years, police have cleared only 39 percent of homicides, and that rate has been steadily dropping, to just 23 percent last year. Gang violence and a resulting lack of cooperation from witnesses, and the community at large, partly explain the low clearance rate. But shortcomings in the city’s homicide squad also come into play. The problems are pronounced enough that Erie[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Feb 5

2015

Getting away with murder in Buffalo

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A lot of people are dying in the streets of Buffalo. The body count last year was 62. To put that number in perspective, consider that only five murders were committed in the balance of Erie County last year. Buffalo’s murder rate is high, not just in comparison with the suburbs, but with comparably sized cities with a population between 250,000 and 500,000. Buffalo recorded an average of 18.7 murders per 100,000 residents vs. 11.3 for all mid-sized cities for the five years ending in 2013. That’s the bad news. And it gets worse. Most killers get away with murder[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jan 12

2015

Scajaquada story voted best of 2014

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Our readers have spoken – Dan Telvock’s coverage of sewage-clogged Scajaquada Creek was the best work produced by Investigative Post in 2014. Thirty-six percent of the 92 readers who cast a vote in our online poll that closed at midnight selected “The Scajaquada is a crippled creek,” which also aired on WGRZ and published in Artvoice. It was the first of nine stories Telvock did on the creek, into which Buffalo and Cheektowaga dump 500 million gallons of sewage and stormwater runoff annually. As a result, sludge up to five feet deep lines some sections of the creek and the water[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jan 3

2015

Taking stock of 2014

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Investigative Post is wrapping up a busy – and productive – year. Dan Telvock, Charlotte Keith and I produced some 90 original pieces of content in 2014, including investigations, follow-up stories, analyzes and blog posts. Many had impact, none more than Dan’s blockbuster story on the shameful condition of Scajaquada Creek and its stomach churning, heart-wrenching follow. We continued to grow our audience during 2014, thanks to our partnerships with WGRZ, Artvoice and City & State. We’re still reviewing our analytics, but it looks like our stories reached a collective audience of 7 million readers and viewers. That’s up from 6[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Dec 22

2014

Suppression of Buffalo Billion spending records

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants everyone to know he’s spending $1 billion to revitalize the Western New York economy. But the bureaucrats he’s charged with managing the Buffalo Billion are refusing to account for how they are spending $855 million earmarked for the program’s big-ticket projects. Three developers, all significant contributors to Cuomo’s gubernatorial campaign, have been selected to build and equip facilities that will house companies recruited to set up shop in Buffalo. But the state-affiliated non-profit corporation managing that work has refused to release contracts and other documents to Investigative Post that detail, among other things, how the contractors[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Sep 23

2014

SolarCity deal is a rich subsidy package

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My first blush impressions of the SolarCity deal announced Tuesday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo: It’s a rich package. The state is committing $750 million – $350 million to build a manufacturing plant and $400 million in potentially forgivable loans to equip it – in exchange for creating 3,000 jobs, half of which would be employed by SolarCity, the other at firms in their supply chain. That works out to $250,000 to $500,000 per job, depending on how you do the math. By comparison, the subsidy package cobbled together to lure the Yahoo! data center in Lockport five years ago involved[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Sep 18

2014

SolarCity shakedown?

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo last fall pledged $225 million to build and equip a clean energy hub along Buffalo’s waterfront. It was good enough for Silevo, a solar panel manufacturer, and Soraa, the makers of high-efficiency light bulbs. It apparently isn’t good enough for SolarCity, however, which bought Silevo in June. Cuomo has subsequently suggested it’s going to take a richer incentive package to bring SolarCity into the fold and press reports indicate at least two other states are in the hunt for the solar panel plant that is penciled in for Buffalo. Given the track record of SolarCity Chairman Elon[...]

Posted 11 years ago
Investigative Post