Categories for DailyPost

Dec 6

2024

State board doubles down on secrecy

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Union protestors look on at the former Wood & Brooks piano factory in Tonawanda. Photo by Garrett Looker. For more than a year, a state board created to determine whether highly subsidized development projects must pay prevailing wages has operated in secrecy. Since May, Investigative Post has pressed the Public Subsidy Board for records detailing its decisions, including on two Western New York projects. In response, the board has dug in its heels. A hearing officer for the state Department of Labor, under whose umbrella the subsidy board operates, issued a ruling last month upholding the agency’s denial of records[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 5

2024

Report: Jail death “may have been preventable”

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Story updated Dec. 8. Sean Riordan’s death might have been prevented if he was given proper medical care while an inmate at the Erie County Holding Center in 2022, a state oversight commission has concluded. Instead, the holding center staff failed to transfer Riordan to a hospital for alcohol withdrawal treatment, and failed to provide adequate care while he was in the jail, the state Commission of Correction concluded in a newly released report. There were “serious deficiencies” in Riordan’s medical care during his incarceration that might have contributed to his death, according to the report. “Had established medical policy[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 4

2024

Buffalo’s financial hole gets deeper

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Ray Nosworthy, Buffalo’s new acting finance commissioner, had a rough first day on the job. His first task Tuesday morning was to tell the Common Council’s Finance Committee that, one quarter into its financial year, the city was staring at a nearly $18 million deficit. He also told lawmakers that Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon is demanding 10 percent cuts in expenditures from all city department heads in next year’s budget. Nosworthy said the “unexpected” $18 million deficit was the result of the city’s depleted savings.  The Council in June adopted a spending plan that had a $40 million imbalance between[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 3

2024

Buffalo’s ‘power structure is the problem’

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Government policies pushed by the region’s traditional power brokers — real estate developers, bankers, law firms and other business interests — have been “a disaster for the people of Buffalo,” a new report concludes.  Tax abatements and subsidies are contributing to “a deepening commercial real estate crisis” downtown, according to the report, released last month by Our City Action Buffalo, a progressive community advocacy group that is a frequent critic of the city’s elected officials.  Opposition to affordable housing projects has exacerbated the city’s poverty problems, according to the report.  What’s more, Buffalo is staring at a fiscal crisis engendered[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 1

2024

Let’s get real about why Harris lost to Trump

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A fair number of press observers criticized mainstream news outlets for not reporting on Donald Trump more critically during the campaign for president. Yeah, the press could have done a better job, at least when it came to its obsession about polls. But I think the criticism was overblown. I mean, did anyone reading the newspaper or watching television news not know what Trump was about? I’ll note that polling showed that voters who relied on mainstream outlets favored Trump’s opponent by a wide margin. I will take issue with one important aspect of press coverage since the election, however.[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 27

2024

Overtime for Buffalo’s city employees through the roof

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Despite the city’s worsening finances, Buffalo’s public employees — mostly cops and firefighters — are racking up overtime pay like never before. Last fiscal year, no fewer than 26 employees earned more than $100,000 in overtime. Another 270 pocketed over $50,000 in overtime, while 400 more took home at least $20,000. The result: a $22 million hole in the city budget that wrapped up in June. Those figures come from a report issued last week by Buffalo Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams, whose staff reviewed five years of payroll records to document the burgeoning cost of overtime and its impact on the[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 26

2024

Locals getting most of Bills stadium work

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Companies and workers local to Western New York have so far done the majority of the work on the new Buffalo Bills stadium. A significant portion of the $1.2 billion in contracts has also gone to out of town concerns. Team and state officials have refused to release much detail about who is getting the work. Investigative Post, however, has used the limited data officials have provided to calculate where the money is flowing. Our analysis found: Fifty-five firms based in the eight counties of Western New York account for 59 percent of the companies that have had workers on[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 25

2024

A call for ‘top to bottom’ audit of OTB

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Three good-government groups have called on State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to conduct a “top-to-bottom” audit of Western Regional Off-Track Betting. With a leadership transition newly complete, the groups — Reinvent Albany, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters — say all of OTB’s activities should be audited. They include OTB’s “revenue and expenses, procurement, investment, management systems, governance, and public transparency and accountability,” the groups said. In a letter sent Monday, the groups said “golden parachutes for departing executives, nepotistic hiring, and an outsize salary for the incoming CEO” were of particular concern. The “golden parachute” refers to $299,000[...]

Posted 1 month ago
Investigative Post