Jim Heaney

Jim Heaney is editor and executive director of Investigative Post. He was an investigative reporter with The Buffalo News from 1986 to 2011 and a reporter and editor with The Orlando Sentinel from 1980-86. His coverage over the years has focused on economic development, local and state government, politics, education, housing and transportation, and he was an early practitioner of computer-assisted reporting. Heaney has won more than 20 journalism awards and was a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

May 13

2024

Online news outlets are hot, newspapers are not

The awarding of Pulitzer Prizes is about celebrating the accomplishments of newspaper journalism. The latest announcements were made last week, and while there was a lot of good work to salute, there were somber undertones. No regional dailies won a Pulitzer. That underscores how most of them have become shells of their former selves. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t great work being produced on the local level. Four Pulitizers were awarded to online news outlets, three of them based in Chicago and Santa Cruz, California. In all, eight newspapers were finalists for a Pulitzer, vs. 12 online outlets. (The balance[...]

Posted 6 months ago

May 6

2024

An update on the sad condition of Kim Pegula

Tim Graham, late of The Buffalo News, now reporting for The Athletic, broke a story last week on the latest involving Kim Pegula. She’s been declared incapacitated and husband Terry Pegula is now her guardian. Terry has transferred a small portion of the couple’s ownership of the Bills to his daughter from his first marriage, who is starting to play a role in team affairs. (Here’s a version that’s not behind a paywall.) ProPublica reports on the IRS investigating billionaires using the sports teams they own to cheat on their taxes. The governor of Illinois is no Kathy Hochul when[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Apr 29

2024

Applying a heavy hand in Lockport – and elsewhere

Lockport Mayor John Lombardi III generated headlines last week when he ordered all city employees to refrain from speaking with reporters. The Lockport Union-Sun & Journal properly chastised Lombardi for the gag order. Unfortunately, Lombardi is far from the only politician employing such heavy handed tactics. Whether it’s a written policy or not, no one in the sprawling bureaucracy controlled by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown is permitted to speak with reporters unless authorized to do so. Rather, all press inquiries are funneled through Mike DeGeorge, the mayor’s spokesman, who frequently fails to return phone calls, much less answer questions. Stonewalling[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Apr 15

2024

Taxes are for us, not them

Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, took in more than $27 billion in revenue last year. It didn’t pay a dime in federal taxes. It’s not alone. As reported by Jacobin: “More than one hundred of the country’s most profitable corporations paid zero federal income taxes in at least one year since the Trump tax cuts were enacted.” The story was based on a report generated by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. You’ve got to read the tables that names names. Many a president and Congress have passed tax laws that have enabled corporations to pay a much lower effective[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Apr 8

2024

Everything OK with Buffalo Bills sale of PSLs. Yeah, right.

The uproar over the cost of personal seat licenses the Buffalo Bills are charging season ticket holders continues to generate a lot of press. The Buffalo News published a full-throated defense of what many fans consider indefensible. The story quotes unnamed sources – presumably employees of the Bills and/or Legends Entertainment – who contended the PSL rollout has been flawless and that the public outcry is much ado about nothing. Yeah, right. The story prompted a sharp rebuke from Neil deMause, author of the Field of Schemes website that reports on stadium projects. He termed the story “a flagrant violation[...]

Posted 8 months ago

Apr 2

2024

Roundup of Buffalo Bills stadium coverage

Image courtesy of WGRZ. Now seems like a good time to review our reporting on the Bills’ new $1.7 billion stadium, slated to open in 2026. Most of the following stories were reported by J. Dale Shoemaker and Mark Scheer. Taxpayer subsidies: Subsidies will top $1 billion between construction and maintenance and go well beyond what New York State typically spends on stadiums and arenas or what taxpayers spend in most other states. The lease will not provide Erie County taxpayers with any relief for maintenance and other ongoing stadium costs. Economic impact: Stadiums typically generate little new economic activity,[...]

Posted 8 months ago

Apr 1

2024

Pegula aided and abetted by Poloncarz & Hochul

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncrz says he’s hopping mad at the Buffalo Bills for the way they’re treating season ticket holders. Says the team should be more transparent in its roll-out of personal seat licenses and that Gov. Kathy Hochul shares his concerns. Sorry, but Poloncarz and Hochul are enablers. They capitulated to Terry Pegula’s demands that the new stadium be located in Orchard Park and that taxpayers foot most of the bill. Along the way, Poloncarz took the ridiculous position that the stadium didn’t require an environmental impact statement and bargained a weak community benefits agreement with the team.[...]

Posted 8 months ago

Mar 29

2024

OTB considering hotel expansion at Batavia Downs

The board of directors for Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. agreed on Thursday to hire two companies to help explore the possible expansion of the 84-room hotel at Batavia Downs in Genesee County. Approval of the agreements came over the objection of one board director — Erie County’s representative Tim Callan, who said he still has questions about how management arrived at the two vendors chosen to do the work. “Management did not answer my questions to my satisfaction,” Callan said following Thursday’s meeting. The board, minus Callan, authorized one contract for $76,000 with Bammel Architects, an Orchard Park firm[...]

Posted 8 months ago