Categories for DailyPost

Apr 11

2022

Hochul playing footsies with donors

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There’s yet another troubling story about Gov. Kathy Hochul’s ethical conduct. The Albany Times Union reported Sunday about Hochul donors pushing legislation to benefit their businesses gaining access to the governor’s senior staff. The story also provides examples of Hochul subsequently using her power as governor to support the business interests of those donors. This arrangement isn’t necessarily illegal, or even unusual in today’s money-soaked political environment. But it stands in stark contrast with the governor’s stated desire to improve the ethics of state government, which some watchdogs consider a cesspool. Hochul continues to draw criticism on another ethical front:[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 10

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Below is the latest “What I’m Reading” portion of our email newsletter that publishes every Sunday. You can subscribe for free here. Let’s discuss “opportunity costs” for a few minutes. An opportunity cost is when you spend money on something at the expense of spending it on something else. An example: You’ve got $100 to spend. You put it towards a nice dinner rather than, say, buying a new winter jacket. That said, the decision by state — and soon, county officials — to spend $1.13 billion to build and maintain a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills involves a huge opportunity[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 7

2022

No tax break request yet for Amazon project

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The online retail giant Amazon hasn’t applied for any tax breaks for a proposed $300 million warehouse in Niagara County.  At least not yet, anyway.  Niagara County Industrial Development Agency Attorney Mark Gabriele said this week that the company has not yet submitted an application for tax break assistance for a five-story distribution center it has proposed for a site on Lockport Road in the Town of Niagara, just outside Niagara Falls.  Today is the deadline for submitting items to be considered for the NCIDA’s next regularly scheduled board meeting, slated for Wednesday.  The board isn’t scheduled to meet again[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 6

2022

Buffalo FAFSA rates on the rebound

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The number of students applying for federal student aid as they transition into college is on the rise in Buffalo after a significant decline during the pandemic. Students looking to enroll in colleges or universities are required to fill out The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to determine if they’re eligible for any financial assistance for tuition, housing and any accompanying fees.  The number of students who completed the FAFSA in high schools across New York dropped 5 percentage points from before the pandemic in February 2020 through the same time this year, according to a recent report[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 5

2022

Allegations of ICE mistreatment of detainees

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A coalition of advocates for immigrants’ rights claims that “egregious conditions” and “unsafe release practices” at the federal detention center in Batavia have caused detainees “serious injury and even death.” Those claims are leveled in a Freedom of Information request filed Wednesday with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the agency that runs the Batavia facility, formally known as the Buffalo Service Processing Center.  In the FOIA request, the coalition cites current and former detainees’ accounts of beatings, medical neglect and other abuses.  In addition to conditions inside the detention center, the coalition takes issue with ICE’s practice of[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 4

2022

WNY tops the list of most wasteful subsidies

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New York state has a long history of squandering huge amounts of taxpayer money on economic development projects that yield little to no returns.  A new report highlighting the state’s “Dirtiest Dozen” economic development deals ranked four Western New York projects at the top of the list.  The report, developed by the American Economics Liberties Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for corporate accountability, singled out the subsidy package offered to Plug Power to locate a facility in Genesee County – at a public cost of $4 million per job – as the worst of the worst.  “The most expensive[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 3

2022

Monday Morning Read

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This week’s reposting of the “What I’m Reading” section of my weekly newsletter is topped by a couple of  fresh items that published in newspapers Sunday. You can subscribe to DailyPost here. It’s free and arrives via email at 6 a.m. every Sunday. I devoted the entire newsletter this week to coverage of the Bills stadium deal, which has generated a lot of attention – and press – across the state and beyond. For perspective, consider this story from USA Today. The Tennessee Titans are planning a new stadium and the speaker of the state House of Representatives told a[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Mar 30

2022

Conflicting cost estimates to rehab stadium

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This story was updated Friday, April 1, at 12:39 p.m. Last November, a consultant working for New York State said it would cost $862 million to renovate the current home of the Buffalo Bills, Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park.  That number was often cited by team representatives and local and state officials as they advocated for what they said was a more cost-effective alternative: a new $1.4 billion stadium. “Many people believe you can renovate the stadium,” Jim Wilkinson, a spokesperson for Pegula Sports and Entertainment, told the Buffalo News in August. “That’s just not realistic.” Erie County Executive Mark[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post