Aug 31
2018
Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney discusses the effort by Assembly Member Crystal Peoples-Stokes to stymie an anti-corruption bill that has languished in a committee she chairs. Heaney spoke with WBFO’s Jay Moran on Press Pass.
Aug 1
2018
The Buffalo News is reporting that the state and Tesla have agreed on deadlines for the company to create jobs related to its solar panel manufacturing plant in South Buffalo. Tesla has two years to create 1,460 jobs in the Buffalo area, including 500 at the factory at Riverbend. Tesla faces fines of up to $41 million a year if it fails to meet the job goals. The state spent $750 million of taxpayer money to build and equip the facility, the centerpiece of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion initiative. Alain Kaloyeros, a top state economic development official, and Louis[...]
Jul 29
2018
Kevin Hardwick and Bill Conrad interview Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney on the media, the rise of Investigative Post and its coverage of the Buffalo Billion on their Sunday morning interview program.
Jul 27
2018
Editor Jim Heaney discusses a recent story by Charlotte Keith on the failure of the AMRI project to spin off the jobs promised by state officials. During his interview with Susan Arbetter of The Capitol Pressroom he also touches on the guilty verdicts in the corruption trial involving the Buffalo Billon and reforms in the state’s economic development programs.
Jul 23
2018
It was one of the first Buffalo Billion projects announced: a $50 million state investment in drug discovery company Albany Molecular Research Inc. which, Gov. Cuomo promised, would yield almost 200 spinoff jobs. Five years on, there’s little evidence those jobs have materialized. AMRI was responsible for creating only 55 jobs, a goal the company met earlier this year. The partner companies whose jobs the state had been counting towards the project’s overall goal of 25o jobs appear to employ only a few dozen people, rather than the 195 anticipated. And only a handful of those jobs seem to be directly[...]
Jul 12
2018
Alain Kaloyeros has been known as many things during his career. Dr. K. Near genius. Nanotech guru. And as of Thursday, convicted criminal. Ditto for Lou Ciminelli. Civic leader. Power broker. Philanthropist. And yes, convicted felon. Down the list of defendants we go. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. And, at the risk of repeating myself, guilty. It was a good day for clean contracting, for good government. But the job is far from done. Testimony during the trial established that the governor’s office installed Todd Howe, a longtime Cuomo associate, as the administration’s “eyes and ears” inside the operation that Kaloyeros headed[...]
Jun 26
2018
Executives at LPCiminelli kept the state-affiliated nonprofit overseeing Buffalo Billion projects in the dark about a second project the company was awarded under a no-bid contract, a key witness testified Monday in the ongoing corruption trial. The company was chosen – quietly – to build a lab and office for biotech company Albany Molecular Research Inc. before LPCiminelli had even submitted their response to the Request for Proposals to build a factory for SolarCity that prosecutors said was rigged in their favor by Alain Kaloyeros and lobbyist Todd Howe. Kevin Schuler, a former LPCiminelli executive who has pled guilty to[...]
Apr 13
2018
Former employees of Career Connection Inc., until recently the largest employer at IBM’s Buffalo office, were told Thursday that the company cannot afford to pay them for their final week of work. In response to our report on WGRZ, IBM said the company has “promptly taken action making sure the employees receive all the money they are owed for their work on the IBM account.” The affected employees will be paid by IBM. “My goal is to accumulate sufficient cash to fund the payroll for the week ended March 30, 2018,” Career Connection Inc.’s CEO, Jessica Killgore, wrote in an[...]