Aug 5
2024
DOT plays gotcha on the Scajaquada Expressway
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The Scajaquada Expressway isn’t a toll road. Not technically.
But the state Department of Transportation has turned it into a moneymaker by surreptitiously installing speed detection cameras under the guise that a stretch of the roadway is a construction zone. As a result, DOT has been issuing a lot of speeding tickets – in the thousands, by the department’s own admission – to motorists.
WKBW first reported on the situation, here and here, followed by The Buffalo News.
As The News reported:
Patrick Freeman, a retired police officer who spent 30 years on SUNY Buffalo State University’s force, has filed a complaint with the State Attorney General’s Office, claiming that there is not enough signage warning drivers of the cameras. In his letter to the state, he also says that the cameras are ticketing people when there is no work being done and that the state has failed to reconfigure the expressway after reducing the speed nine years ago.
I travel the affected stretch of the expressway daily and have rarely seen construction crews. Mostly just pylons.
What’s more, the eastbound stretch of the expressway feeds off the Kensington Expressway, which has a speed limit of 50. Which means the DOT is snaring cars shortly after they’ve been permitted to travel at higher speeds.
The Buffalo News reported Empire State Development, the state’s economic development authority, has structured a new deal with Tesla involving its plant in South Buffalo.
The story appears to be the result of Investigative Post filing a request with ESD for relevant documents under the Freedom of Information Law. We filed that request back in January, seeking records about Tesla’s plans for a “supercomputer” which is central to the new deal. ESD dragged its feet for six months, refusing to release records. Two weeks ago we appealed the delay. On Thursday, we won the appeal and got the records.
State officials didn’t turn the records over to just us, however. They also apparently gave a heads up to The News about what we had wrestled from them and granted the paper an interview with officials, while ignoring our request to speak with someone.
Consider the timing: We pushed ESD for six months for records, and the day they finally release them to us, a story with the details contained in those records appears in the paper.
This is part of an ongoing cozy relationship between ESD and The News, dating to when I broke the story in 2014 about bid rigging involving construction of the Tesla plant. We published several additional investigative stories over the next couple of years, which upset Cuomo administration officials and resulted in several stories in The News done with the cooperation of ESD and other Cuomo administration officials that attempted to refute our reporting.
Last month I noted a Buffalo News story in which Mayor Byron Brown blocked a request made to the Erie County IDA for $25,000 to help fund a story to consider ways to revitalize Jefferson Avenue. The mayor insisted the city already has a comprehensive plan in place. I filed a request with the city under the state Freedom of Information Law for a copy of said plan. I got a response Friday.
It turns out there is a comprehensive plan. Trouble is, it was produced in 2007. As in 17 years ago.
The city also shared two other reports, here and here, that, while informative, don’t strike me as a comprehensive plan. I’ll leave it up to the IDA to decide.
Meanwhile, I’ll refer once again to a study done by Henry Taylor and his team at the University at Buffalo that found conditions on the East Side, including Jefferson Avenue, have gotten worse the past three decades.
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Congressman Tim Kennedy recently took to the floor of the House of Representatives to note the loss of the Old Pink, the Allentown dive bar that burned to the ground in June. This is a concern to the United States Congress? Really? Of late he’s also taken the podium to laud the career of an employee retiring from the City of Buffalo. Again, really?
Kennedy’s Twitter thread on the Old Pink prompted one respondent to declare:
This is what you’re doing with your time in DC?!?!?!?! Wasting time talking about a bar that burned down in Buffalo?!?!?!?
The attorney general in Rhode Island has pledged to throw the book at government officials who unreasonably withhold records requested under the state’s freedom of information law. We could use that kind of resolve here in New York, starting with enabling legislation.
An op-ed in The Washington Post details how Donald Trump’s campaign is unraveling. The Post also reported on a fishy transfer of $10 million from the Egyptian government to Trump in 2016, perhaps to assist his presidential campaign. Elsewhere, ProPublica profiles the man behind Project 2025’s most radical elements.
Alternative weeklies – the Village Voice and the like – ain’t what they used to be – with some publishing AI generated clickbait. A report from Wired.
Josh Allen has got to be the most beloved athlete Buffalo has seen in a long, long time, for reasons like this.
