Categories for DailyPost

Jul 30

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive Jim Heaney’s recommended reading (below) and a summary of Investigative Post’s reporting of the previous week in your inbox Sunday mornings. It’s free. Such a deal. The USA Today network took a look at government’s response to the Christmas Blizzard and found plenty of blame to go around. “Put simply, emergency management breakdowns cost lives,” the story concluded. A state senator wants his local district attorney to investigate a company who he says lied in an effort to secure IDA subsidies. And no, we’re not talking about the recent shenanigans in Lockport, although maybe we should. Relatively[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jul 27

2023

Mayor, Council cut deal to bail out Braymiller

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The Buffalo Common Council on Thursday voted to approve a package of  funding for small businesses across the city, a pot of money Mayor Byron Brown’s administration conjured out of pandemic relief aid to make a $563,000 forgivable loan to a downtown grocery store more palatable to lawmakers. Under the plan, Council members will each have $389,000 earmarked for small business grants in their districts, with an additional $2 million in loan funding also available. That $5.5 million package passed Thursday alongside a plan that reallocates $59.9 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding from various proposed community programs[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jul 26

2023

Our library system is hurting

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Nakia Luper, a mother of three, has watched as the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood deteriorated around her. Stores closings. The Central Terminal crumbling.  And, in 2005, her neighborhood library shutting down.  “The kids used to go and have fun,” Luper said. There were “different activities going on at the library all the time. And then one day it was just gone.” The closest library is now three miles away. Luper said it’s not safe for children to walk that distance through blighted neighborhoods to take out a library book.  Nearly two decades after funding for the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jul 25

2023

Cashing in on the post-pandemic learning crisis

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This story is republished from ProPublica, a nonprofit, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Investigative Post republishes its work from time to time. For the nation’s schoolchildren, the data on pandemic learning loss is relentlessly bleak, with education researchers and economists warning that, unless dramatic action is taken, students will suffer a lifelong drop in income as a result of lagging achievement. “This cohort of students is going to be punished throughout their lifetime,” noted Eric Hanushek, the Stanford economist who did the income study, in ProPublica’s recent examination of the struggle to make up for what students missed out on during[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jul 24

2023

iPost adds board members, elects officers

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Investigative Post has added four members to its board of directors and re-elected its lineup of officers. New board members include Paul Vukelic, president and CEO of Try-It Distributing; Leah Hamilton, associate publisher of  The Challenger Community News; Chris O’Brien, an attorney and law school professor; and Alison Keane, whose history of serving in a fundraising capacity on nonprofit boards includes the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies.  “Our new directors bring a variety of talents, connections and life experiences that enrich our organization,” said Jim Heaney, Investigative Post’s founder, editor and executive director. Vukelic, Hamilton, O’Brien and Keane join six incumbents[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jul 23

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive the complete newsletter in you inbox Sunday mornings. In 2017, Charlotte Keith and I reported that New York state and local economic development agencies were doling out $8.6 billion a year in subsidies under then Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Nevertheless, upstate was saddled with one of the worst economies in the nation. If it were a stand-alone state, it would rank fourth from the bottom. Even worse than Mississippi. A new study is out, issued by Citizens Budget Commission, that reports subsidies in New York have grown to nearly $11 billion and headed higher. The report read in part:[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jul 20

2023

GOP lawmakers to sue over OTB reforms

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Dennis Vacco, the state’s former attorney general, has been hired by Niagara County and other Republican-led counties in Western New York to challenge reform measures enacted by the state Legislature in May that affect the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. The changes removed OTB’s existing board and reconstituted its voting powers to shift control from rural to urban counties. Proponents said the changes were necessary to address corruption and cronyism; opponents characterized it as a power play by Democrats at the expense of Republicans.  Kevin Schuler, Niagara County’s public information officer, confirmed this week that the county and “several other[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jul 19

2023

Officials rebuke OTB over 11th hour contract extensions

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Editor’s note: This story is a continuation of Investigative Post’s content sharing arrangement with the Niagara Gazette.  Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick used one word to describe the contract extensions recently granted to 18 executives at the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corporation: “obscene.” State Assembly Member Monica Wallace, who sponsored OTB reform legislation, termed the contract extensions “highly suspect.”  The objections were triggered by an April 27 vote by the OTB board to give multi-year contract extensions to CEO and President Henry Wojtaszek and 17 members of his management team. The board acted just days before the state Legislature added[...]

Posted 1 year ago
Investigative Post