Archives

Oct 3

2022

How Amazon plays the leverage game

Published by

Cathy Rayhill was floored when she heard Amazon wanted to build a three-million-square-foot warehouse on Grand Island. “It was completely inappropriate for our community, that was my first thought,” she said. Rayhill envisioned Amazon’s trucks wearing down the island’s two sets of bridges to the point where the town would have to close them and raise taxes to fix them. Not only could the warehouse operation put the island’s infrastructure at risk, it could harm the environment — all for 1,000 jobs that would not pay much above the minimum wage.  Rayhill and her neighbors were outraged and began organizing[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 29

2022

Podcast: Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Toles

Published by

Tom Toles is the most decorated journalist in the history of Buffalo news media. He cut his teeth as an editorial cartoonist at The Courier-Express, moved on to The Buffalo News, where he earned his Pulitzer in 1990, and then succeeded the legendary Herblock at The Washington Post in 2002. His work was syndicated in more than 200 newspapers across the country Along the way, the Hamburg native has received numerous awards for his work. Honors, in addition to the Pulitzer, include the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award in 2003 and the Herblock Prize in 2011. Toles retired in[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 28

2022

Raises (but no reforms) for Buffalo police

Published by

Buffalo police just got a raise. The city got nothing — no concessions, no reforms — in exchange. That’s the upshot of more than three years of negotiations between the Brown administration and the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, whose contract expired in July 2019. When talks stalled in early 2021, the dispute put in the hands of a state arbitrator, who was empowered only to deal with pay.  Reform — the mantra of demonstrators and elected officials alike in the summer of 2020 — was sidelined. On July 19, a state arbitration panel awarded Buffalo police raises and retroactive pay worth[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 26

2022

Podcast: Interview with Brian Higgins, part 2

Published by

Geoff Kelly recently interviewed U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins about a variety of topics, including national politics, the Tops massacre and the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Congressman’s response, in so many words, involved what he sees as division. We posted the first half of the interview on Friday. You can watch that first part via our YouTube channel or listen to it as a podcast. Next up: an interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Toles.

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 26

2022

Monday Morning Read

Published by

Get the news a day earlier by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, emailed every Sunday morning. The Pew Research Center has released new studies on how people get their news and how they use social media to access media sites. First, how people get their news. Online has overtaken television, at least for those under 50. Newspapers, well, they’re yesterday’s news; only 5 percent of people consider print their go-to source of news. Social media? Half of Americans use social media “often” or “sometimes” to follow the news. Interestingly enough, the share of people who use social media “often” is[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 23

2022

Podcast: Interview with Brian Higgins

Published by

Geoff Kelly recently interviewed U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins about a variety of topics, including national politics, the Tops massacre and the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Congressman’s response, in so many words, involved what he sees as division. You can watch the first part of the interview via our YouTube channel or listen to it as a podcast. We’ll post the second half of the interview Monday. Next up: an interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Toles.

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 20

2022

Hochul has inflated number of stadium jobs

Published by

Gov. Kathy Hochul and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz have repeatedly claimed that 10,000 jobs will be created during construction of the $1.4 billion stadium for the Buffalo Bills.  “I love the fact that this is the largest construction project in Western New York history with 10,000 union jobs,” Hochul said during a visit in April to Buffalo.   It appears, however, that the stadium project will create about 6,800 direct construction jobs statewide, not the 10,000 claimed by Hochul and Poloncarz. That lower estimate was included in an economic impact study commissioned by the Bills. Only by adding “indirect” and[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 19

2022

No relief for local taxpayers on Bills stadium

Published by

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz likes to say the new stadium deal he and Gov. Kathy Hochul cut with the Buffalo Bills gets the county “out of the football business.” The deal, however, does not get the county out of the business of paying for a football stadium.  The county’s annual costs for the Bills current home, Highmark Stadium, have ranged from $10.7 million to $12.6 million in recent years.  Estimates provided to county lawmakers for paying off bonds to cover the county’s share of new stadium construction have come in lower, between $7.7 million and $9 million annually. The latest[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post