Categories for DailyPost

Jul 24

2022

A most unreasonable demand

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I’ve never heard of such a thing: elected officials being asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement to preclude them from discussing public policy. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is making the demand of three county legislators who would serve on a committee to consider, at long last, a community benefits agreement tied to the construction of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. The county executive wants those negotiations, much like talks involving the stadium, to be held in secret. Public policy should not be negotiated behind closed doors. This is yet another example of Poloncarz kowtowing to the Pegulas and thumbing[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 20

2022

Hardwick demands answers from OTB

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For the first time, one of the governments that owns the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. is demanding answers about the agency’s management practices and business dealings. Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick sent two letters this week to Henry Wojtaszek, OTB’s president and CEO. One letter posed a series of questions about the agency’s practice of providing top-shelf health insurance to board members, despite repeated warnings that doing so is impermissible. It’s a subject Investigative Post has covered extensively, in more than two dozen stories published over four years.  Hardwick’s other letter raised questions about OTB’s sale of land to[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 19

2022

Council adopts new district lines

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On Tuesday, Buffalo’s Common Council voted unanimously to adopt a redistricting plan that community groups and activists have spent the past two months trying to stop. The new district maps comprise an amended version of a redistricting plan unveiled in May by a citizens commission whose members were appointed by the Council and Mayor Byron Brown. The plan — which largely leaves intact the gerrymandering of a decade ago — will now be sent to Brown. The mayor must hold a public hearing on the matter. He then can approve or veto the plan, or allow it to pass into[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 18

2022

Investigative Post adds a reporter

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J. Dale Shoemaker has joined the reporting staff of Investigative Post. A native of central Pennsylvania, he most recently reported for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He worked for three years with PublicSource, a nonprofit news organization in Pittsburgh after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as managing editor of The Pitt News, the student newspaper which publishes daily. He also served a stint as reporter at the Newark Star-Ledger. Shoemaker’s reporting for PublicSource prompted Pittsburgh to pass a transparency law for city contracts that requires the release of additional information on spending prior[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 18

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Below is the “What I’m Reading” section of WeeklyPost, our Sunday email newsletter. You can subscribe here. Buffalo has a new school superintendent with the appointment of Tonja Williams. I’ve got to admit I was a little stunned when I heard the news.  As we reported in May, she’s never taught at the elementary or high school level. She has little experience as a principal and her tenure at Futures Academy was a failure: academic achievement at the struggling elementary school actually got worse during her time there and she was eventually removed as a result. Sources told us that[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 12

2022

iPost’s redistricting coverage in The Nation

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For the past month, Investigative Post’s Geoff Kelly has been covering the showdown between Buffalo’s Common Council and a coalition of activists and good government organizations over the once-in-a-decade opportunity to redraw the city’s Council districts. First he set up the conflict, providing background on the gerrymandering of a decade ago, then reporting on the largely opaque process undertaken by the Council this year and the mobilization of those urging the Council to do a better job. Then he described the extraordinary June 28 public hearing on the Council’s plan, which kept the current gerrymandered districts largely the same. More[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 11

2022

City Hall puts off day of financial reckoning

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The COVID pandemic has been very good for the City of Buffalo’s finances. Pandemic relief funds from the federal American Rescue Plan have been a tremendous boon. You can see that money at work right now in city streets and parks. It’s going to help pay for water and sewer projects, as well as micro-loans to small businesses and the expansion of broadband internet access. It helped keep poor city residents in their homes. Most important for city government has been revenue replacement money — cash the federal government sent to make up for revenue the city claims it lost[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 10

2022

Bad governance, poor politics

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This week, Jim Heaney recaps Investigative Post’s coverage of the Common Council’s fumbling of its redistricting process and gives a shout-out to a half-dozen stories that have caught his eye. You can get Heaney’s insights in your inbox every Sunday morning by subscribing to WeeklyPost. Jimmy Griffin used to call city lawmakers the “Comical Council.” If only the current incarnation was the least bit funny. Geoff Kelly has been following the process of redistricting the Council’s nine districts, as required every decade based on new Census numbers. He first reported on the Council’s proposed district lines, gerrymandered to protect incumbents, then[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post