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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.

Feb 11

2016

Heaney talks lead poisoning on ‘Pressroom

Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney takes Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown to task for his unwillingness to collaborate with the Erie County Health Department to tackle the city’s lead poisoning problem. Heaney termed as “outrageous” the mayor’s acceptance of the status quo. Listen to his interview Thursday with Susan Arbetter of The Capitol Pressroom. The interview runs from 22:13 to 36:48. Brown’s unwillingness to work more closely with the county will be the topic of Heaney’s “Outrages & Insights” written and video blog and will post on InvestigativePost.org and broadcast on WGRZ this coming Sunday.

Posted 9 years ago

Feb 10

2016

Another Mayday! for SolarCity

I wrote a post back in October about SolarCity’s mounting losses and falling stock price that carried the headline “SolarCity: Mayday! Mayday!” My post was prompted by a record loss in the third quarter that sent the company’s stock price down to $38 a share. SolarCity yesterday reported another huge loss for the fourth quarter that resulted in a year-end loss totaling $710 million. As in almost three-quarters of a billion dollars. The stock market responded by dumping SolarCity shares, dropping the price to $26.35 at the close of trading Tuesday. Things went from bad to worse overnight Tuesday and[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Feb 8

2016

WNY job growth continues to lag

The Buffalo and Western New York economy is humming, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a bevy of local and state politicians. But the numbers tell a different story. Job growth in the Buffalo market grew by an annual average of 0.8 percent between 2010 and last year, half the national average of 1.6 percent. Local job growth last year of 1.1 percent was significantly less than the national average of 1.9 percent of the statewide average of 1.7 percent. Steve Brown and I discuss on this week’s edition of Outrages & Insights.

Posted 9 years ago

Feb 4

2016

Quick Hit: Heaney on Urban League scrum

Jim Heaney, writing in The Public, sizes up the brouhaha in county government regarding the Buffalo urban League and concludes the agency’s defenders are ignoring a compelling case of wrongdoing. “We’re not talking honest mistakes involving $20,000 in excessive charges,” Heaney writes. “No, the bogus bills involved, among other transgressions, charging for work never performed. And former employees describe a culture where they were encouraged to “bill creatively”—by inflating the number of hours they worked and charging the county for time spent on things only tenuously related to social work.”

Posted 9 years ago

Jan 31

2016

Heaney talks media with Capitol Pressroom

Jim Heaney and Susan Arbetter of The Capitol Pressroom discuss the declining fortunes of legacy media, in particular newspapers, and the rise of nonprofit newsrooms. Heaney expressed solidarity with the style of adversarial journalism practiced by Glenn Greenwald and his colleagues at The Intercept and said the upstate press could and should have been more aggressive over the past several decades in reporting on New York’s troubled economy and corrupt state government. The interview runs from 21:39 to 36:02 at this link.

Posted 9 years ago

Jan 31

2016

Latest Urban League developments

The transgressions of the Buffalo Urban League – submitting inflated bills to Erie County, failing to train employees, retaliating against whistleblowers – is an issue that Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz and fellow Democrats on the County Legislature are wishing would go away. But it’s not. A critical audit issued in December by County Comptroller Stefan Mychajli was the topic of a hearing Thursday in which Republicans and Democrats clashed. Later in the day, Investigative Post reported the Acting District Attorney Michael Flaherty is reviewing the audit to determine if there are grounds to launch a criminal investigation. Jim Heaney[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Jan 10

2016

Considering Mark Poloncarz

I’ve been on the airwaves the past week discussing Mark Poloncarz – his demeanor, his job performance, his supposed mandate. I appeared Sunday with Steve Brown on Outrages & Insights, my weekly video blog on WGRZ. I was interviewed last week at greater length by Susan Arbetter for a segment of The Capitol Pressroom that broadcasts on 20 public radio stations across upstate, including WBFO. I used to hold Poloncarz in relatively high regard, but have soured on him over the past year. Yes, he is smart (although thin skinned, and sometimes downright prickly). And he can be more forthcoming than your[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Dec 28

2015

Our top stories of 2015

We’re closing the books on our fourth year of muckraking, and a pretty good year it’s been. I’ll save the details for my annual “State of Investigative Post” that we’ll publish in February to mark our fourth anniversary. For right now I want to note stories that had particular impact in 2015 and ask you, our readers, viewers and listeners, to cast your vote for our best story of the year. In deciding what stories to pursue, we consider their potential for impact. As such, we don’t simply “drop the bomb,” so to speak, as in “write a big story[...]

Posted 9 years ago
Investigative Post