Dec 11
2012
Heaney on Thompson on WBEN
iPost Editor Jim Heaney discusses Mayor Byron Brown’s much-criticized appointment of Antoine Thompson as executive director of Buffalo Employment Training Center.
Posted 12 years ago
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.
Dec 11
2012
iPost Editor Jim Heaney discusses Mayor Byron Brown’s much-criticized appointment of Antoine Thompson as executive director of Buffalo Employment Training Center.
Dec 10
2012
Antoine Thompson couldn’t find a job when voters fired him from his state Senate job two years ago. So, of course, Mayor Byron Brown has now hired Thompson to help the county’s 37,900 unemployed find jobs. Yeah, right. This is about as blatant – and shameless – as patronage hiring gets. First consider that Thompson and Brown have been joined at the hip, politically speaking, for most of their careers, dating back to their days together in Grassroots, the political club that helped spawn both of their careers. Thompson worked as a legislative aide to Brown when he served on[...]
Dec 6
2012
The biotech company the state plans to spend $50 million on to lure to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus has lost $112 million the past three years and hasn’t posted an annual profit since 2008. And that’s just the beginning of the financial difficulties confronting Albany Molecular Research, according to a probe by Investigative Post. The company has laid off at least 80 employees since 2010 and shuttered one of its foreign facilities, with plans to close a second operation near Seattle. The Albany-based company’s stock price, meanwhile, sunk from $61.66 in 2001 to $2.26 in December 2011, although the stock[...]
Dec 5
2012
There’s a lot to like about the blueprint for spending $1 billion in state aid to revitalize the Western New York economy that was released Tuesday. I’d feel better about the plan’s prospects, however, if Gov. Andrew Cuomo hadn’t used its release to announce a heavily subsidized deal to bring 250 jobs here that smacks of the business-as-usual, smokestack-chasing approach that has failed us in the past. Let me get my skepticism out of the way up front. The state has agreed to spend $50 million on a biomedical facility and equipment to accommodate an expansion of Albany Molecular Research to[...]
Dec 2
2012
Matt Enstice is chief operating officer of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. He’s been involved with the project since its inception 10 years ago and has used an unassuming, innovative management style to lead the effort to transform 120 acres on the northern edge of downtown into a world class medical campus. A native of Western New York, Enstice earned an undergraduate degree in English from Hobart College and a master of business administration from Canisius College. He left Buffalo after school to work in the entertainment industry and spent five years in the 1990s working at Saturday Night Live[...]
Nov 27
2012
The WNY Regional Economic Development Council postponed a meeting set for Tuesday to consider a draft of the blueprint for spending $1 billion pledged by Gov. Cuomo to revitalize the local economy. Officials said Cuomo’s review has been sidetracked by Hurricane Sandy. A report by WGRZ.
Nov 25
2012
Stephanie Simeon is executive director of Heart of the City Neighborhoods, a non-profit housing development corporation serving Buffalo’s Lower West Side. Simeon, 31, is a native of Brooklyn who moved to Buffalo to attend the University at Buffalo, where she earned an undergraduate degree in social science and master’s degree in urban planning. She serves on the board of the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women. Last year she was selected by Business First as one of the region’s top 40 young people under 40. Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney interviewed Simeon on Nov. 20. A 4 minute, 45[...]
Nov 15
2012
Five months after being asked to crack down on idling trucks, state environmental officials have visited the plaza only twice and handed out only a handful of tickets. Story is part of a three-post package.