Categories for DailyPost

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 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years ago

Jun 4

2023

Monday Morning Read

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WeeklyPost is a free email newsletter delivered Sunday mornings. You can subscribe here. The Buffalo News published a good analysis Sunday on the dynamics that doomed Medaille University and how they threaten other private colleges, as well. I graduated from Medaille in 1977, after first attending St. Bonaventure University, and it’s weird to see your alma mater go out of business. I got a good education at Medaille; three professors stick out, Kevin Ransom, Ross Runfola and Roger Bonenfant. I also had a good adjunct you might have heard of: Irv Weinstein. He got me my first serious taste of[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 2

2023

Tickets on sale for our summer benefit concert

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Circle your calendar, buy your tickets, a popular summer concert tradition is returning after a pandemic hiatus!  Tom Toles and the Junkman’s Choir will play the Sportsmen’s Tavern the evening of Thursday, July 13, to benefit Investigative Post.   Toles, of course, is the Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist, late of The Washington Post and Buffalo News. (He presently serves on Investigative Post’s board of directors.)  “It’s exciting to restart the iPost Sportsmen’s summer concert series,” Toles said.  “It’s always a crazy fun gathering of great local musicians and a guest drummer/singer who is a joyful and unpredictable wild animal.[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 1

2023

The false promises of IDA subsidies

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In order for Western New York’s economy to remain stable, economic development officials argue that industrial development agencies need to grant tax breaks and other incentives. “People just aren’t going to build here unless they have incentives to help them to do that,” Mark Onesi, chair of the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency, told Investigative Post last year. “It’s expensive to do business here so we help as many people as we can.” Research, however, refutes those assertions. Economists have found between 75 and 90 percent of jobs created with tax breaks would have happened without the help.  “The system[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 31

2023

IDA tax breaks cost schools millions

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 Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories on industrial development agencies. Tomorrow, we report on “perverse incentives” and other shortcomings in IDA programs. Any time Susan McGee’s children want to join an activity outside of the classroom — be it sports, music or other extracurriculars — it means one thing: a fundraiser. Raising money for extracurriculars may seem routine for a small, struggling Rust Belt city like Dunkirk, where McGee’s children attend school. But there’s another factor at play: The Dunkirk City School District loses out on an average of $5 million in revenue every year thanks[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 30

2023

Lawsuit seeks millions from OTB officials

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Earlier this month a federal court issued summonses to a host of current and former board members at Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., as part of a lawsuit seeking to hold the directors liable for the agency’s alleged misuse of millions of public dollars. The lawsuit aims to compel those 21 board members to pay back to OTB — and thus to the 15 counties and two cities that own the agency — money “improperly used” to purchase health insurance for board members, expensive tickets to sporting events and concerts, and contracts for politically connected firms. Specifically, the lawsuit claims[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post