Categories for Outrages & Insights

Sep 11

2013

A rich, but tolerable development subsidy deal

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Anyone who has followed my work the past dozen years knows I am not a fan of economic development subsidies. And the deal announced Tuesday of a manufacturing plant involves a lot of public money – some $25.9 million over the next decade in grants, tax breaks and power discounts. That works out to nearly $151,000 per job, which ranks this as one of the region’s richest subsidy deals ever. It’s not the obscene $2.1 million per job subsidy awarded a few years back to Yahoo’s data center in Lockport. But it’s more than all but a handful of deals[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Aug 16

2013

Buffalo is not Denver. Darn.

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I spent three-and-a-half days in Denver recently while on vacation in Colorado, which is a beautiful state. I couldn’t have come away more impressed with the city. First, what’s there: An inviting, tree-lined downtown pedestrian mall that has block after block of stores, restaurants and people. A second thriving section of downtown, known as LoDo, anchored by a striking baseball stadium and a train station under restoration. (Imagine that.) An ample stock of historic buildings, many of them nifty brick structures. A light rail system that actually goes someplace. More than 200 parks, plus several municipal parks operated outside the[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Jul 17

2013

Brown challenger off to decent fundraising start

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It’s been a foregone conclusion that Mayor Byron Brown would continue to raise oodles of money in pursuit of a third term as mayor. The question has been whether his challengers would be able to raise enough money to mount a serious challenge. Brown’s two challengers – Bernie Tolbert, a Democrat, and Sergio Rodriguez, a Republican – filed their first campaign finance disclosure reports this week, and they provided insight into their viability as candidates. The numbers show Tolbert is well on his way to reaching his goal of raising up to $350,000 before the Sept. 10 Democratic primary. His[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Jun 26

2013

Cuomo’s failed huffing and puffing on Peace Bridge

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First Gov. Andrew Cuomo huffed. In October, he had his emissaries tell the Public Bridge Authority he wanted it to turn over control – along with $95 million – to New York State to redevelop the U.S. side of the bridge plaza. When that didn’t work, he puffed. The governor in April had a member of his senior staff write a caustic letter to a senior Canadian transport official accusing Canadian members of the bridge authority of “foot dragging” and a “lack of cooperation” and demanding the removal of general manager Ron Rienas who, you guessed it, is a Canadian.[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Jun 14

2013

Peace Bridge bill may be DOA

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I suspect a number of newspaper readers and television viewers surmise that the Peace Bridge Authority is about to go bye-bye as a result of Wednesday’s approval by the state Legislature of a bill that would dissolve the authority that operates the Peace Bridge next year unless its governing board acts in accordance with state wishes. That would be a false assumption, and the story I did Thursday evening on WGRZ was my attempt to set the record straight. I want to expand on that story here. The bridge authority has a legal opinion from Phillips Lytle, Buffalo’s biggest law[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Jun 7

2013

More Cuomo-orchestrated noise on Peace Bridge

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Looking at the video of Thursday’s press conference, I couldn’t help but notice the make up of the self-proclaimed Western New York Leaders For Peace Bridge Progress. White, male and wealthy. A cross-section of the community, they are not. But they do reflect the political donor class, particularly Democratic friendly contributors. A check of state Board of Elections records show almost everyone in the 22 person group is a frequent contributor to political campaigns, collectively giving hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past decade. Nine have contributed $52,750 to Cuomo’s campaign, either directly or through their companies or spouses. The group includes several notable developers who,[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 25

2013

Demone Smith’s continued defiance

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are among those who have gone on record in favor of tougher enforcement of election laws and other statutes aimed at promoting ethical conduct on the part of public officials. The catalyst to these calls has been two recent high-profile corruption cases that snared New York City politicians. Not that we needed two indictments to know something is rotten in the Empire State. Look no further than the “D” grade the state received on a risk for public corruption report card issued by the Center for Public Integrity. Nor do[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Apr 2

2013

The problem with Albany governing in the dark

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As if we needed more evidence that New York’s “Three Men in a Room” way of governing doesn’t work, there is this year’s legislative session. First there was the wham-bam bill to toughen gun control laws. Among other things, it limited magazines to no more than seven rounds of ammunition. Turns out that few such magazines are actually manufactured and sold. O0ps. The mistake was fixed – in more secret deliberations, of course. Then there is the budget passed last week that included two provisions that are looking worse with each passing day, now that they are actually seeing the light[...]

Posted 12 years ago
Investigative Post