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.

Oct 16

2013

Cuomo muddies the waters on Gallagher Beach

A month-and-a-half ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared his intent to open Gallagher Beach near the South Buffalo – Lackawanna border for public swimming. Congressman Brian Higgins is pushing to open the beach as soon as next summer. Not so fast, concluded an analysis by Erie County’s former senior public health engineer. He concluded opening Gallagher Beach for swimming is “probably impractical” because of a raft of environmental concerns. The analysis, coupled with reporting by our environmental reporter Dan Telvock, painted a picture of a beach whose waters rest in a harbor basin contaminated with PCBs and whose neighbors include two Superfund sites that[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Oct 7

2013

Heaney talks elections, environment with WBFO

Editor Jim Heaney talks about two stories he and Dan Telvock have broken the past 10 days on Investigative Post. A conversation with WBFO’s Eileen Buckley on Press Pass.

Posted 11 years ago

Sep 29

2013

Buffalo’s disappearing Democrats

Four years ago, Mickey Kearns lost the Democratic primary for mayor in a landslide. He garnered 14,866 votes. Earlier this month, Byron Brown won the Democratic primary for mayor in a landslide. He received 14,433 votes. In other words, more people voted for Kearns four years ago than for Brown this year. That’s what happens when four out of five voters stay at home on primary day. This year’s turnout was a paltry 20 percent, well below any other mayoral primary in recent history, where up to 60 percent of registered Democrats cast ballots. Much has been made of the[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Sep 26

2013

City of Apathetic Voters

Voter turnout has dropped by two-thirds over the past nine Democratic primaries for Buffalo mayor. Turnout is also lower for Common Council and School Board races. Jim Heaney reports on how and why city voters have stopped showing up at the polls. An expanded version will be published in The Buffalo News on Sunday.

Posted 11 years ago

Sep 11

2013

A rich, but tolerable development subsidy deal

Anyone who has followed my work the past dozen years knows I am not a fan of economic development subsidies. And the deal announced Tuesday of a manufacturing plant involves a lot of public money – some $25.9 million over the next decade in grants, tax breaks and power discounts. That works out to nearly $151,000 per job, which ranks this as one of the region’s richest subsidy deals ever. It’s not the obscene $2.1 million per job subsidy awarded a few years back to Yahoo’s data center in Lockport. But it’s more than all but a handful of deals[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Aug 29

2013

Fact checking the Buffalo mayoral debate

Jim Heaney examined the words and numbers expressed by Byron Brown, Bernie Tolbert and Sergio Rodriguez regarding the local economy during Wednesday’s mayoral debate. The bottom line: Tolbert and Rodriguez were generally accurate, while Brown made several claims that were unsubstantiated.

Posted 12 years ago

Aug 16

2013

Buffalo is not Denver. Darn.

I spent three-and-a-half days in Denver recently while on vacation in Colorado, which is a beautiful state. I couldn’t have come away more impressed with the city. First, what’s there: An inviting, tree-lined downtown pedestrian mall that has block after block of stores, restaurants and people. A second thriving section of downtown, known as LoDo, anchored by a striking baseball stadium and a train station under restoration. (Imagine that.) An ample stock of historic buildings, many of them nifty brick structures. A light rail system that actually goes someplace. More than 200 parks, plus several municipal parks operated outside the[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Aug 1

2013

Another Cuomo’s “victory tour”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s brazen self-promotion is on full display in this report by WGRZ’s Dave McKinley. Keep in mind that in the case of both casino revenue and Peace Bridge plaza expansion, the governor claimed victory when, in fact, the Senecas and Canadians prevailed in their negotiations with the state.

Posted 12 years ago