Investigative Post

Editor’s note: The original version of this column incorrectly reported on events related to actions by the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority involving the city’s four-year budget plan. The source of the errors: The control board, on its website, incorrectly labeled videos of  special meetings held on June 16 and July 20. Investigative Post based its reporting […]

Only one city in the country is suffering more than Buffalo from the financial devastation of the COVID crisis. And that’s Rochester, just an hour down the Thruway. A forthcoming study, the source of a New York Times analysis published Monday, projects Buffalo’s government is staring at a 15 to 20 percent shortfall in revenue […]

Following up on Geoff Kelly’s report last week, Jim Heaney talks about provisions of Buffalo’s contract with its police union that make it difficult to discipline officers and deprive the department’s leadership of many management rights. Heaney, speaking on The Capitol Pressroom,  noted that while Mayor Byron Brown has harshly criticized the union and its […]

 A cop shooting and paralyzing a teenage driver.  A police tow truck driver running a red light and slamming into a passenger car. A cell block attendant ramming a handcuffed detainee’s face into a door at Central Booking. The incidents all led to lawsuits against the City of Buffalo and its police department, and […]

Politicians and police have been raising the spectre of “outside agitators” since the day protests began in Buffalo. For the most part, local media has amplified the message: Outsiders are slipping into town to incite violence and destruction.  But arrest records suggest that narrative is not true. And officials allow that much of the intelligence […]

Jim Heaney wrote Sunday that vandalism associated with the weekend protests shouldn’t usurp a long-overdue discussion about racism, including a failure by city officials to rein in their police department and address other concerns of black and brown residents.  Heaney spoke with Jay Moran on WBFO‘s Press Pass.  

Allow me to provide some perspective in light of what transpired Saturday night in Niagara Square. The issue isn’t “outside agitators,” the unsubstantiated claim made by Mayor Bryon Brown and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. And it’s really not vandalism and looting, as unfortunate as that was. No, the real issue is how city government […]

The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the city’s fragile finances. But it hasn’t changed the Brown administration’s proclivity for budgets constructed on risky revenue assumptions and optimistic expense projections, according to a report issued Tuesday by the city comptroller’s office. In her report, Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams expressed “substantial concerns” about the 2020-21 budget proposals Buffalo […]