Investigative Post

If you subscribe to WeeklyPost, our newsletter delivered via email Sunday mornings,  you could have read this post – and more – yesterday. Just saying. Subscribe here. Byron Brown told CNN last week that the federal government needs to do more to help cities like Buffalo. Strange words coming from a mayor who has turned his […]

Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed city budget is awash in federal pandemic relief funds. It’s bolstered by the restoration of long withheld Seneca casino money. And, on top of those windfalls, Brown has proposed a property tax hike for only the second time since he took office in 2006. The city needs all the money it […]

For the last three years, Buffalo’s comptroller has been asking Mayor Byron Brown’s administration to justify a $1 million, no-bid contract awarded to developer William Huntress.  Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams’s office has twice audited the current lease for the city’s records storage facility, given to Huntress’s Acquest Development in 2018.  Both times, according to the comptroller, […]

Last August, Peter Rizzo sent the state elections board a detailed analysis alleging Mayor Byron Brown had violated a number of campaign finance laws. First, Rizzo wrote, the mayor’s campaign failed to identify the individual owners of limited liability corporations, as required by state law. Rizzo identified “more than 100 campaign contributions from limited liability […]

Newly appointed Corporation Counsel Cavette Chambers began her tenure as the city’s chief lawyer by asking for more money to pay outside firms to represent the city in court. On Feb. 17, Chambers emailed a formal request for the law department’s $3.2 million budget to be topped up with an extra $300,000 for “outside counsel, […]

Jim Heaney fielded questions from David Lombardo, host of The Capitol Pressroom, about the race between Byron Brown and India Walton. Heaney offered an assessment on the strengths and shortcomings of each candidate’s campaign. Give a listen.  

The contest between India Walton and Byron Brown looked like it could be close. It wasn’t.  Though it’ll be a while before the write-in votes for Brown are validated and absentee ballots are counted, the outcome is clear: Brown won a fifth term resoundingly, according to unofficial returns from the Erie County Board of Elections. […]

This story was written by Jim Heaney based on interviews by Investigative Post reporters with 120 City of Buffalo voters. The interviews were conducted at 19 polling places, located in all nine Common Council districts. Three-quarters of the interviews took place on election day, the balance during early voting last week. Participating staff included Layne […]