Categories for DailyPost

Mar 5

2025

Reforms, at last, at OTB

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OTB boss Byron Brown speaks to reporters at Batavia Downs. Photo by Garrett Looker. After years of scandal and critical audits, the governing board of the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. has agreed in principle to a slate of reforms that address some longstanding criticisms of the agency.  The course correction includes capping severance pay and travel expenses, putting more contracts out to bid, and tighter monitoring of promotional giveaways.  Also under consideration is whether OTB will purchase a suite at the new Buffalo Bills stadium. Not under consideration is termination of health insurance provided to OTB’s chairman and 23[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Mar 4

2025

An unusual housing discrimination case

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For only the third time in the past decade the City of Buffalo is using its fair housing law to sue a landlord and his property manager. The city usually prosecutes negligent property owners in City Housing Court, but for reasons officials refuse to discuss, the landlord was never taken to Housing Court despite a history of repeated code violations. The case involves a property at 323 Dewey Ave. in northeast Buffalo. The lawsuit contends mold inside the house caused health problems for tenant Zakkiyya Carter and her underaged son. The city is suing Kapil Verma, his company Vaastu Energy[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Mar 3

2025

Talk about riding a dead horse

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Here’s a strange – and indefensible – subsidy. Government handouts to keep the failing horse racing industry afloat in New York.  “The state is using one particularly corrosive form of gambling to keep another marginalized form alive,” reports The New York Times. The story is behind a paywall, but fear not, you can read it at this gift link, which provides access even if you’re not a subscriber. Going forward, this newsletter will provide gift links to stories in publications that include The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. While we’re on the topic of state government, the[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 27

2025

ICE’s extensive use of solitary confinement in Batavia

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Lansine Sidibe serves a coconut to a child in Sao Paulo, Brazil, prior to his emigration to the United States. Photo via Kathleen Maynard. Like many migrants, Lansine Sidibe came to the United States in 2022 seeking asylum, first fleeing war in his home country Mali and later threats of violence in Brazil. But instead of finding a new home, Sidibe spent every single day of the last 32 months in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, much of that time at the agency’s Batavia facility. For 10 of those months, Sidibe was held in solitary confinement.  Such treatment[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 26

2025

Scanlon campaign again violates ethics laws

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Buffalo Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon. For the second time since he took office in October, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s campaign violated local, state and federal codes prohibiting the use of public resources to advance political campaigns. From early December until this morning, two of three social media links at the bottom of the City of Buffalo’s governmental website connected to Scanlon campaign accounts. A spokesperson for the mayor said the links had been “fixed” after Investigative Post sought comment on the matter. But for nearly three months, the Instagram and Twitter links at the bottom of the city’s homepage connected[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 25

2025

Something else City Hall fails to do

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The light pole at Niagara and Garfield streets that fell in a windstorm in February 2019, injuring Donald Anderson. Donald Anderson in February 2019 was walking through a windstorm to his job at a Riverside tavern when a city streetlight — “badly corroded” and past its “usable life,” according to expert testimony — fell and hit him on his head. “Next thing I remember I woke up and I was covered in blood, people were all around me and I didn’t know what was going on,” Anderson testified in a deposition for a lawsuit he filed the following year. Buffalo’s[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 24

2025

Subsides amounting to billions of dollars

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Politicians can’t throw enough money at Micron Technology to entice the company to build a microchip factory north of Syracuse. Ken Girardin of the Empire Center for Public Policy took a close look at the deal, and yikes, it is rich enough to make the Buffalo Billion deal that brought Tesla to South Buffalo look like a steal — which it wasn’t unless you’re Elon Musk. Micron is in line for subsidies worth more than $11 billion. That’s billion, not million. Among the goodies: Up to $5.5 billion in state tax credits. Tax abatements, sales and otherwise, of $4.9 billion. Property tax abatements that[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 21

2025

Good news, bad news for Buffalo finances

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One-shot revenues and belt-tightening efforts have erased the deficit Buffalo’s government faced in the fall, but expensive legal settlements and overtime costs threaten to derail that progress. The city’s finance commissioner in December reported the city was running an $18 million deficit just three months into the financial year, which began July 1. That’s because Byron Brown’s administration had all but emptied the city’s reserves to plug unanticipated shortfalls in the previous year’s spending plan. Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon and the Common Council had planned to use those reserves to balance the current budget. To address the resulting deficit, Scanlon[...]

Posted 2 months ago
Investigative Post