422 Search Results for buffalo billion

May 21

2020

COVID-19 cited in spike of opioid overdoses

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Update: 3:15 p.m. There’s yet another consequence to the COVID-19 pandemic: More opioid users are dying of overdoses. Health authorities report that opioid use has not increased locally, but because of social isolation, more people are using alone, making it less likely someone is around to help them in the event they overdose.  Eighty-five people died in Erie County from presumed overdoses through the first four months of the year. That’s up from 48 during the same period last year and 64 in 2018. “They’re alone and we’re finding people too late,” said Cheryll Moore, director of the Erie County[...]

Posted 4 years ago

May 6

2020

OTB lands $3.2M intended for small business

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The Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. is not to be mistaken for a small business. It’s a state-created public benefit corporation, owned by 15 counties and two cities, and charged with running legalized betting operations in western and central New York. It shares its profits with those local governments and the State of New York. Its employees, starting with its well compensated CEO, Henry Wojtaszek, are treated as public-sector employees, drawing, for example, a pension from the state.  And OTB reported some $3.1 million in cash reserves in its last audited financial statements. Nevertheless, OTB has managed to obtain[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Apr 2

2020

Health care providers hemorrhaging money

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Western New York’s hospitals were in dire financial shape coming into 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic  — with the attendant costs in equipment, staffing and, perhaps most damagingly, lost revenue — is going to compound their problems.  “It’s going to be ugly,” Kaleida spokesman Michael Hughes told Investigative Post in an email. It’s not just hospitals that will feel the pain, either. Primary care practices, clinics and other medical service providers, their business greatly diminished by the shutdown, all are facing pay cuts, layoffs and even closure.  The $2.2 trillion federal CARES Act, passed last week by Congress, includes a $100[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Dec 7

2019

Gambini joins Investigative Post staff

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Phil Gambini is off to a running start with Investigative Post. Gambini joined the Investigative Post reporting staff last week after five years with the Niagara Gazette. He broke his first story Friday and has another teed up for this coming week. In recent months, while still with the Gazette, Gambini teamed with Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney to report on several stories on the Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. “Phil’s a digger,” Heaney said. “He’s widely respected in Niagara County for his work with the Gazette and his reporting skills are going to be a real asset to[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Oct 23

2019

Questionable data center assumptions

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An alliance of environmental, community organizations and local governments support a plan to build massive data centers in two upstate towns, including Somerset in Niagara County.  Project backers contend the data centers would help the environment, provide jobs to displaced workers and replenish the tax coffers of local governments.  “It really is a win-win-win for the community, the environment and for workers,” Lisa Dix, senior New York campaign manager for Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, told Investigative Post. There is reason to question those assumptions, however. The project calls for new steel structures to be built on the near-defunct coal[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Oct 22

2019

Data centers: Big subsidies, few jobs

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Subsidized data centers can be expensive propositions for taxpayers. They typically require hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer assistance for every job created — and the price tag is sometimes much steeper. The cost of subsidizing data centers built over the past decade in Lockport, for example, worked out to $1.9 million per job. That’s far higher than the typical cost per job for a government-subsidized project. What’s more, there are few indications that data centers inspire other new businesses to enter a locale, said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a subsidy watchdog organization that has[...]

Posted 5 years ago

May 21

2019

The cost of suspending driver’s licenses

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 A “staggering” number of motorists across the state, including Western New York, lose their driver’s license every year. The state suspends more than a half-million annually; the count in Erie County approaches 26,000. Drivers can lose their license without violating traffic laws. Failure to pay state taxes or make child support payments are among the offenses that can result in a driver losing their license. Still, nearly two-thirds of suspensions result from the failure to pay traffic tickets or show up in court in response to getting one. In theory, losing a license keeps drivers off the road. But national studies[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Dec 3

2018

Ciminelli sentenced for corruption conviction

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 Buffalo developer Louis Ciminelli was sentenced to 28 months in prison and fined $500,000 by a federal judge in Manhattan Monday. Ciminelli was convicted in July for his role in a bid rigging scheme that landed his company, LPCiminelli, a contract worth $26.25 million to build a 1.2 million square foot factory for SolarCity, now Tesla. Alain Kaloyeros, the state official who oversaw the project, was also convicted, along with two developers from Syracuse. Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney, whose reporting in 2014 first exposed the scheme, told WGRZ’s Steve Brown on Monday that he considered the sentence “a[...]

Posted 5 years ago