Investigative Post

Geoff Kelly reported Tuesday that Buffalo has fiscal problems. Jim Heaney on Wednesday discussed the story with Susan Arbetter on The Capitol Pressroom.    

To hear Mayor Byron Brown tell the story, the City of Buffalo’s finances are strong and stable, and his finance team has constructed another in a series of sound, responsible budgets.  Two important bellwethers put the lie to that narrative. The first is the depletion of the city’s reserves. In the past decade, the Brown […]

In just over two years, New York State issued nearly 1.7 million driver’s license suspensions to more than 620,000 drivers — a disproportionate number of them poor, people of color or both. These suspensions were not the result of reckless or drunken driving, or other dangerous behavior; they were slapped on drivers who failed to […]

 Hundreds of young children living in Buffalo’s inner-city neighborhoods continue to be diagnosed every year with lead poisoning. And City Hall continues to do next to nothing about it. “Buffalo has not made as much progress as other communities have and not as much progress as perhaps they could,” said Andrew McLellan, president of […]

New York is one of at least 41 states that suspend drivers’ licenses if they fail to pay traffic fines. In 2016, the state Department of Motor Vehicles issued 53,648 suspension or revocation orders to drivers in Erie County, according to data obtained Investigative Post. This captures suspensions issued for any reason, but experts said […]

Buffalo’s fair housing law is supposed to prevent landlords from refusing to rent to someone simply because they rely on government assistance – like a Section 8 voucher – to help pay their rent. But that law, introduced in 2006, has gone largely unenforced, despite the more than two dozen discrimination complaints, most of them […]

Susan Arbetter, host of The Capitol Pressroom, told Editor Jim Heaney a recent story by Charlotte Keith produced by Investigative Post made her “angry.” The story documented the failure by the administration of Mayor Byron Brown to enforce the city’s fair housing law. Arbetter’s angst was rooted in the mayor’s indifference to the plight of […]

The University at Buffalo Foundation spent almost $40,000 on questionable entertainment expenses, operated for three years under an expired contract with the campus, and lacks policies to ensure contracts are competitively bid, according to an audit released yesterday by the state comptroller’s office. The foundation also paid the salaries of two retired university staff members […]