Categories for DailyPost

Nov 12

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive our latest reporting and Jim Heaney’s commentary in your inbox Sunday mornings. Brian Higgins has confirmed he’s leaving Congress in February to take over the reins at Shea’s Performing Arts Center. The move has been in the works for a while, as our Geoff Kelly reported back in September. Higgins, in an interview with The Buffalo News, said Congress is “in a very, very bad place right now.” Yeah, Congress is a mess, but he’s known that for a long time. If he didn’t want to continue, he shouldn’t have run for another term. Once[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 8

2023

Home ownership by Blacks in Buffalo has flatlined

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Despite a plethora of programs encouraging Blacks to purchase their own homes, the ownership rate for African-Americans in Buffalo has barely budged over the past four decades.  Where there has been growth lately, it’s come in the suburbs, according to Census data and federal mortgage loan reports. Concerns about redlining in the city persist, but Black incomes in Buffalo — pegged at about three-fifths that of whites — are largely blamed for the stagnation. “Overall, we can attribute the lower Black homeownership rate to the racial wealth gap,” said Buffalo State University associate professor Jason Knight, coordinator of the school’s[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 8

2023

Poloncarz wins big; mixed bag for parties in town races

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Election Day was good to Erie County Democrats, especially in the top-ticket races. In the year’s marquee race, Mark Poloncarz beat Republican Chrissy Casilio by a resounding 18 points, winning an unprecedented fourth term as Erie County executive. And Democrats preserved their 7-to-4 majority in the Erie County Legislature, as incumbents in three competitive districts handily fended off Republican and Conservative challengers. In town and village elections, however, the results had a more purplish hue, as Democrats and Republicans alike made gains in areas that once were single-party fiefdoms. “In the suburbs, the towns that are flipping are continuing to[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 6

2023

Hochul doubles down on a mistake

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Putting a huge industrial park in rural Genesee County was a mistake to begin with. The site was too rural. It lacked infrastructure. Auto dependent. That was the conclusion of a smart-growth analysis mandated by state law. State economic development officials used a loophole to green light the location anyway, and Steve Hyde and his Genesee County Economic Development Center went to work, thanks to some $43 million in state assistance. For nearly a decade, progress was slow. The site, known as STAMP, or Science Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park, remained fields and farmland. No tenants were to be had.[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 5

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Get Monday Morning Read delivered to your inbox Sunday mornings by subscribing here. Moog, which shook down the Erie County IDA for its 14th subsidy earlier this year, reported a 35 percent jump in profits for the third quarter. Reported The Buffalo News: “The company said it expects its ongoing pricing and simplification efforts to further improve Moog’s profitability in the coming years.” Ken Kruly has last-minute news regarding this week’s general election. Nick Langworthy was one of 24 House Republicans who voted last week to expel George Santos.  The measure failed. Buffalo Rising had an interesting podcast interview with Frits Abell. I find this ironic: politicians complaining we’re[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 3

2023

More state money for embattled industrial park

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The state is investing an additional $56 million in the STAMP industrial park to finance the completion of infrastructure projects that are the subject of legal and regulatory disputes. Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announced that Genesee County Economic Development Center, the economic development agency constructing  STAMP, will receive $56 million for various infrastructure projects. They  include an on-site wastewater treatment facility and pump station, a nine-mile sewage transmission line, a water main, natural gas lines and road improvements. The Genesee County EDC has been building STAMP’s infrastructure for several years. Some of the work has run into legal or[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Oct 26

2023

OTB lurches toward ‘new era’

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The Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. is entering a “new era,” its new board chair has claimed, a shift that could see the public gambling agency increase transparency and institute reforms. The OTB board of directors meeting Thursday marked the first time the group had met since state lawmakers in May fired the old board, ordered the 17 counties and cities that own the agency to appoint a new one, and instituted weighted voting, throwing control to densely populated, Democratically-controlled Erie and Monroe counties, along with Buffalo and Rochester. Those reforms came after more than four years of lawsuits, investigations[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Oct 24

2023

Mayor’s half-baked paid leave report

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Last month, Mayor Byron Brown promised his administration would begin issuing “a comprehensive report encompassing all employees on paid leave” for each biweekly pay period. Investigative Post obtained a copy of the first such report last Thursday, a week after it was distributed to department heads on Oct. 12.  It is hardly comprehensive. The report indicates more than 1,400 city employees across 15 departments — about half the city workforce — took some sort of paid leave during the pay period covering the last two weeks of September. The report identifies the employees by name and department, and identifies the[...]

Posted 1 year ago
Investigative Post