Articles for Mark Scheer

Jun 5

2021

State relents, releases Tesla jobs report

After several days of delay, the Cuomo administration has released an annual employment report filed by Tesla under the terms of the $950 million public investment in the company’s solar panel production facility in South Buffalo. Empire State Development Corp., which had denied several requests for a copy of the document from Investigative Post, responded Friday to an appeal filed following a denial of an earlier Freedom of Information Law request for the report that Tesla is required to file by May 31 of each year. ESD, which earlier this week issued a statement on the company’s job creation numbers[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 2

2021

State withholding details on Tesla jobs

The Cuomo administration is refusing to release a new report on the number of people employed at the Tesla plant built with $950 million in taxpayer funds in South Buffalo. The Empire State Development Corp. says the report, due by May 31, was submitted, but the agency has refused to release it to Investigative Post. Instead, ESD issued a statement indicating that Tesla now has 1,000 workers at the Gigafactory in Buffalo — 460 short of the total the company promised to create under its original agreement with the state. According to ESD, Tesla currently employs 1,600 people statewide, although[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 1

2021

Jemal: A salty but savvy operator

Douglas Jemal is not your prototypical, button-down developer. He prefers jeans, cowboy boots and baseball caps and isn’t shy about using salty language. Years ago, he taught a pet parrot — a bird he named “Eagle” — to say the mother of all bad words, the one that starts with an F and rhymes with luck. And there was the time — the night before he was to meet with bankers to discuss financing his family’s bid to purchase the Baltimore Orioles baseball team — when he got into a fistfight with a fan sitting in the stands behind him[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 27

2021

The politics of Doug Jemal

Douglas Jemal may be an unconventional developer in some ways, but he also engages in a practice common to many in the real estate business: giving money, sometimes lots of it, to politicians in position to support his projects. Jemal is unusual in another way: He’s the recipient of a presidential pardon. His political contributions in Buffalo began when he started purchasing local property. Records show Jemal or his company, Douglas Development, have made $39,160 in donations to local Republicans and Democrats alike. Jemal’s WNY campaign contributions Candidate Contributions State Senator Tim Kennedy $11,000 Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul $10,000 Erie[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 27

2021

Jemal: Big portfolio, unconventional methods

People in the commercial real estate business look at all the properties Doug Jemal is buying around Buffalo and ask: How is he going to pay for all the work he’s taking on? Jemal isn’t saying. He wouldn’t talk to Investigative Post for this story. But in an interview with WGRZ, he gave what some might consider an unnerving answer to the question. “We’re all going to run out of money. I’m going to die broke. There’s nothing that I’m taking with me,” he said. “Look, needless to say, you know my M.O. I’m a riverboat gambler. I’m a shooter.[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 19

2021

Report: Samsung factory going to Austin

South Korean media is reporting that Samsung will build a new $17 billion microchip plant in Austin, Texas. A formal announcement could come as soon as Friday following a meeting between President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Any such deal would dash local hopes about luring the plant – and its 1,900 jobs – to a 1,250-acre industrial park in rural Genesee County. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer and officials with the Genesee County Economic Development Center have touted the Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park in the Town of Alabama as an ideal location for Samsung. Officials[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 26

2021

Spiraling costs at remote industrial park

The bill is coming due for putting an industrial park in the hinterlands of Genesee County and the cost to taxpayers is considerable. The Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park, being built on 1,250 acres in the rural Town of Alabama, flunked the state’s smart growth test when first proposed. The project’s location rated so poorly that it failed to meet seven of ten smart growth criteria under the state’s own grading system, prompting one good government group to label it a “poster child for location inefficiency.” Empire State Development Corp. nevertheless approved spending state tax dollars to develop the[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Mar 26

2021

Big tax break approved for Plug Power

Economic development officials in Genesee County on Thursday approved a huge tax break for a company that plans on building a hydrogen power plant. Plug Power would pay reduced property and sales taxes over 20 years that would save the company $118 million. The plant, located in what is now a vacant industrial park in the Town of Alabama, would employ 68 workers. The tax breaks were unanimously approved without discussion by the governing board of the Genesee County Economic Development Center. The project still requires approval by the board of the New York Power Authority. Plans call for the[...]

Posted 4 years ago