Categories for DailyPost

Jun 21

2023

Big money in Council races

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The five contested races for Buffalo Common Council seats have attracted an astonishing amount of money, and for good reasons.  For one, the winners will determine whether Mayor Byron Brown will have a friendly majority on the Council for the last two years of his fifth term, or whether he will continue to spar with a bloc of five (and sometimes six) legislators, as he has for the past four years. Second, they will choose the successor to Darius Pridgen as Council president in January. The Council president wields a great deal of power and would become acting mayor, should[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jun 19

2023

Clover Group sued for discrimination — again

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Another former employee of the Clover Group has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the real estate firm and its president, Michael Joseph, of illegal and racially discriminatory practices. Shane Forrest of Greensboro, North Carolina, says the Williamsville-based company and its executives “intentionally engaged in illegal race-based housing discrimination by refusing to develop housing in or near Black neighborhoods.” In doing so, Forrest claims, the company violated federal law, as well as the laws of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, where Forrest scouted potential sites for Clover’s market-rate senior housing complexes.  Clover owns or operates dozens of such developments in a[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jun 18

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost, our free newsletter emailed Sunday mornings and you’ll get a summary of our latest reporting and what’s below – my recommended reading to start off your week. First off, have you noticed the changed typography in the print edition of The Buffalo News? It coincides with Lee Enterprises, the paper’s chain owner, dismantling The News’ design desk and shipping the work off to one of Lee’s satellite offices. Personally, I think the revised look is a step backwards. Speaking of Lee, a former newspaper publisher and editor down in Virginia wrote a couple of posts in his[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jun 13

2023

A possible problem with City Hall pay raises

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Buffalo’s Common Council voted 5-to-3 Tuesday to give pay raises to themselves, the mayor, the city comptroller and the nine elected members of the city school board. A commission empaneled by the Council in April recommended the 12.63 percent raises for city elected officials and 87 percent pay raises for school board members. The increases will cost taxpayers $254,410 per year.  The new salaries are as follows: Mayor: $178,518.55 — a boost of $20,018.55. Comptroller: $134,592.85 — a boost of $15,092.85. Common Council member: $84,472.50 — a boost of $9,472.50. Board of Education member: $28,000 — a boost of $13,ooo.[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jun 9

2023

Tax subsidy reforms stall in Albany

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New York state lawmakers were poised to end the 2023 legislative session Friday with no action on a pair of bills that would have drastically reformed the state’s 107 industrial development agencies. Industrial development agencies, or IDAs, are public benefit corporations that have the power to grant property, sales and mortgage tax breaks to corporations who apply for those benefits, often in exchange for creating new jobs. The eight counties of Western New York have 15 IDAs at both the county and municipal levels. One bill, sponsored by Senator Sean Ryan, a Buffalo Democrat, would have barred IDAs from granting[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jun 7

2023

Podcast: How tax breaks deplete school budgets

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Last week, Investigative Post’s J. Dale Shoemaker reported on tax subsidies distributed by industrial development agencies — subsidies that deprive school districts of millions of dollars each year. In this latest episode of Investigative Post’s Reporter’s Notebook, host Garrett Looker sat down with Shoemaker to talk about his months-long analysis into how tax subsidies are affecting school districts. Watch via YouTube or listen as a podcast.

Posted 1 year ago

Jun 5

2023

OTB board extends embattled executives

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Editor’s note: Investigative Post and the Niagara Gazette share selected stories, including the following report from Mark Scheer, who previously worked for Investigative Post. Days before state lawmakers agreed to abolish their positions, the board of directors for Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. approved new employee contracts for several members of its management team, including CEO and President Henry Wojtaszek. Documents available on OTB’s website show the board approved contracts during its April 27 meeting after exiting an executive session where directors discussed personnel matters behind closed doors. The minutes reflect only that the board approved the employee contracts. They[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jun 5

2023

Feds pause permit for critical industrial park work

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Editor’s note: Investigative Post and the Niagara Gazette share selected stories, including the following report from Mark Scheer, who previously worked for Investigative Post. A federal agency has put a hold on a permit for construction of a piece of infrastructure critical to the development of a sprawling industrial park in Genesee County. An official representing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has informed the Tonawanda Seneca Nation that it intends to take another look at the potential environmental impact of a wastewater pipeline that would connect a 1,250-acre industrial park in rural Genesee County to Oak Orchard Creek and Lake Ontario.[...]

Posted 1 year ago
Investigative Post