Categories for DailyPost

Oct 3

2023

Buffalo’s stonewalling city government

Published by

Mayor Byron Brown’s administration has long been hostile to requests for public documents from journalists.  In recent months, that hostility has grown worse. Since this summer, the mayor’s law department and several of his commissioners have broken state law time and again in their responses — or failures to respond — to document requests by Investigative Post reporters. Brown’s administration has failed to abide by the state Freedom of Information Law’s most basic requirements to respond to requests in a timely manner.  The city’s top attorney, Corporation Counsel Cavette Chambers, has refused to answer our reporters’ formal appeals when Brown’s[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 2

2023

Feds shut down STAMP pipeline construction

Published by

Following three spills of drilling fluids onto federally protected land, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has ordered the Genesee County Economic Development Center to halt construction of a wastewater pipeline that will service its Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park. The shutdown, which the Fish and Wildlife Service notified the economic development agency of Friday, will continue until the spills are cleaned up and required reports and plans are completed and approved. The state  Department of Environmental Conservation issued its own violation notice last week. Both agencies have said they could levy fines. The shutdown is the latest blow[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 1

2023

Monday Morning Read

Published by

Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll get a complete newsletter every Sunday. Buffalo is on the Canadian border. (Duh). The way things are going, Canada is going to get slammed by climate change, Maclean’s magazine reports. By the 2070s we will be living in a fundamentally different climate than the one our country was built for. Cities across the country will begin to reach “climate departure”: a symbolic rubicon, after which a climate falls completely outside historical norms. Even the coldest year, going forward, will be hotter than the hottest in the past. What does that say about our prospects, sitting right[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 28

2023

STAMP pipeline drilling goes awry

Published by

The state has cited the developers of the STAMP industrial park for violations involving a spill of drilling fluids in a wetland through which it is constructing a sewage pipeline. Earlier this month, crews conducting horizontal drilling to construct the pipeline through the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge encountered sinkholes, causing 100 gallons of drilling fluid to spill into a half-acre area. The drilling fluid consisted of water and clay slurry, made from Wyoming sodium bentonite clay, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. It’s the second such spill since mid-August. The DEC, in a notice issued Monday, said the[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 27

2023

Lawsuits have commenced in blaze that killed firefighter

Published by

The owner of 743 Main Street — the site of the fire that killed Buffalo firefighter Jason Arno in March — is suing the contractor that investigators blame for starting the blaze. The plaintiff is 743 Main Street LLC, a limited liability company with the same address as Avalon Development, former U.S. Rep. Chris Jacobs’ development company. Jacobs used the LLC to purchase the building in December 2022 for $1.3 million.  The defendant is JP Contracting of WNY, whose workers used a propane roofing torch and a leaf blower to melt ice on the exterior masonry of the building the[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 27

2023

Orleans County doubles down on pipeline opposition

Published by

Orleans County lawmakers, already engaged in a legal battle over a wastewater pipeline for a major Genesee County industrial park, adopted a resolution on Tuesday that solidified the county’s position, further entrenching the government against the neighboring economic development agency. Orleans County two weeks ago sued the Genesee County Economic Development Center — that county’s industrial development agency — in State Supreme Court over a sewage line for the Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park [STAMP] located in Genesee County’s Town of Alabama. The county asserts the Genesee County EDC has illegally pursued and funded eminent domain proceedings on its[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 26

2023

How many City Hall employees being paid not to work?

Published by

The comptroller’s office has launched an investigation to determine how many city employees are on paid leave, why and for how long, and how much it costs taxpayers, according to the city’s chief auditor, who testified Tuesday before the Common Council’s Civil Service Committee. The comptroller’s inquiry is a response to Investigative Post’s report on Jill Repman, formerly Jill Parisi, an administrative assistant for the Buffalo Fire Department who was on paid leave for seven and half years. The city has paid Repman nearly $600,000 since suspending her in 2016, when she was accused of tampering with the department’s payroll[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 25

2023

Appellate court reinstates OTB ‘whistleblower’ lawsuit

Published by

A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court’s decision and reinstated a lawsuit filed by a former executive of the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. who claimed he was fired after he agreed to cooperate with state and federal investigators who were examining the inner-workings of the organization.  In a ruling issued Monday, U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals determined that U.S. District Court Judge William Skretny erred in his October decision to dismiss as untimely the lawsuit filed by former OTB Chief Operating Officer Michael Nolan. In his earlier ruling, Skretny determined that Nolan’s claims of First Amendment[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post