Categories for DailyPost

May 6

2024

An update on the sad condition of Kim Pegula

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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 11 months ago

May 3

2024

Buffalo’s precarious budget

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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown struck a pragmatic tone Wednesday as he introduced his budget proposal for the coming year, which is balanced with a 9 percent hike in property taxes and nearly $15 million in reserve funds. The mayor’s $618 million spending proposal, however, suffers from some of the same unrealistic revenue projections that led to shortfalls in the past, before the city’s treasury was bursting with federal pandemic aid to conceal the difference. Consider just three revenue sources the Brown administration has frequently overestimated in past budget cycles: parking meters, parking tickets, and traffic fines. Parking meters are forecast[...]

Posted 11 months ago

May 2

2024

West Side property still the ‘House From Hell’

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149 Arkansas Street on Buffalo’s West Side. Photo by Garrett Looker. Almost two years after two dead bodies were found in a boarded-up West Side house, the property remains a nuisance that continues to attract squatters, drug users and prostitutes, neighbors told Investigative Post.  Complaints to the city, including to police, the Common Council and Housing Court seem to be falling on deaf ears, neighbors said this week.  “I’m losing my patience,” said Arkansas Street resident Wilmer Peralta. “It’s been two years. The house is still vacant. What are they doing?” The boarded-up house at 149 Arkansas St., owned by[...]

Posted 11 months ago

Apr 30

2024

Buffalo tax hike coming

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This column was excerpted from Investigative Post’s weekly “PoliticalPost” newsletter. Subscribe here and get “PoliticalPost” in your inbox every Wednesday morning. How much more will Buffalo property owners pay in taxes in the coming year? Much will be revealed when Mayor Byron Brown unveils his budget proposal Wednesday during his State of the City speech at Shea’s 710 Theatre.  But we know a tax hike will be part of the bargain. The mayor and the Common Council for months have been discussing it as an inevitability, given that federal pandemic aid, which has kept the city’s precarious finances above water[...]

Posted 11 months ago

Apr 30

2024

IDAs have ‘perverse incentive’ to issue tax breaks

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The Erie County IDA earns a majority of its revenue from fees generated by approving subsidy deals. Photo by Garrett Looker. No wonder industrial development agencies across New York State dole out so many tax breaks, watchdog groups say: The more IDAs issue, the more money they make for themselves. That system creates a “perverse incentive,” the groups claim in a new report. “It just creates this horrible incentive where the IDA isn’t working for the public anymore, it’s working for its own self interest,” said Anya Gizis, a researcher at Good Jobs First and one of the report’s authors.[...]

Posted 11 months ago

Apr 29

2024

Applying a heavy hand in Lockport – and elsewhere

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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 11 months ago

Apr 26

2024

School districts succeeding at reading

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A third grade student raises a hand during Karen Shedrick’s lesson at Cuba-Rushford Elementary. Photo by Garrett Looker This is the second in a series on literacy in Western New York public schools. The first installment can be found here. Young children scramble around a gymnasium at Cleveland-Hill Elementary School on a recent night, gazing over tables lined with piles of books — all free for them to take home. Laia, who’s in the second grade, filled a bag full of new titles, books slightly above her current reading level, “so she can advance and be ahead of the curve[...]

Posted 11 months ago

Apr 25

2024

Feds revoke major permit for STAMP industrial park

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Three spills of drilling fluid into protected wetlands contributed to revocation of permit. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has dealt a major blow to the developers of a massive industrial park in rural Genesee County, notifying them this week that the agency would revoke a key permit needed to construct the park’s wastewater pipeline. That pipeline in recent months has emerged as one of the most controversial components of the 1,250-acre Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park — STAMP — one of the largest industrial parks under construction in New York. It’s so far generated two lawsuits and its[...]

Posted 11 months ago
Investigative Post