Categories for DailyPost

May 15

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Below is the “What I’m Reading” section of Jim Heaney’s WeeklyPost, which is delivered via email each Sunday morning. The newsletter is free; if you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here. The Buffalo News reported on the cost of personal seat licenses to purchase season tickets to Bills games at the new stadium. A figure of $1,000 a ticket was bandied during negotiations to determine how stadium constriction costs would be divvied up. With that decided, the Bills floated PSL charges through a fan survey, and they’re a lot more than $1,000. PSLs for upper end zones seats can be had for under[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 14

2022

Deadly mass shooting on Jefferson Avenue

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Investigative Post occasionally does work for The Daily Beast, a national news site. On Saturday, we teamed up to report on the shooting at Tops Friendly Markets on Jefferson Avenue that left 10 dead, three wounded and an apparent white supremacist in custody. Here’s a link to the story, which identifies and profiles the Tops security guard who died in an exchange of gunfire with the killer. As his son told us, his father died a hero.

Posted 3 years ago

May 11

2022

Yet another failing Niagara Falls project

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A lot of big ideas have been floated for revitalizing the City of Niagara Falls and most of them have ended the same way: in disappointment.  Residents are still waiting for Niagara Falls Redevelopment — a company owned by New York City real estate developer Howard Milstein — to do something with the 140 acres it acquired downtown as part of a 1997 Master Redevelopment Agreement with the city.  The most-recent effort to renovate and reopen the Hotel Niagara, an iconic 1920s-era building on Rainbow Boulevard that has been vacant for more than a decade, stalled last year amid financing[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 11

2022

Maziarz sues OTB alleging “fraud”

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Updated on Thursday, May 12, at 5:25 p.m. Former New York State Sen. George Maziarz wants a judge to order  officials from Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. to reimburse taxpayers for benefits he says they improperly obtained while using the public agency as a “slush fund, an ATM [and] a piggy bank.”  OTB leaders, meanwhile, want Maziarz to shut up. In a lawsuit filed Saturday in state Supreme Court in Erie County, Maziarz alleges that the misuse of public resources by OTB higher-ups has prevented the agency’s “massive revenues” from being “fairly distributed to the municipalities and taxpayers it serves.” [...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 10

2022

Q&A: Explaining cryptocurrency & blockchain

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Dr. Bina Ramamurthy is director of the Blockchain ThinkLab at the University at Buffalo. She’s also a crypto miner herself. That puts her at the forefront of the industry, which poses a challenge to traditional currency and has raised environmental concerns because of its demand for energy. Blockchain and cryptocurrency are mysteries to many people, so to understand the interview, let’s define what we’re talking about. Blockchain, introduced in 2011, involves computers and servers programmed to solve complicated mathematical problems on an ongoing, virtual ledger. This work is managed by so-called “crypto miners,” who earn cryptocurrency – most commonly Bitcoin[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 9

2022

Arena project with relevance to Sabres

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An NHL arena that opened three years after Buffalo’s KeyBank Center is now in line for a facelift that could cost over $200 million.  Members of the public authority that oversees PNC Arena – the suburban Raleigh, North Carolina, venue that has hosted the Carolina Hurricanes since 1999 – last week agreed to pursue renovations inside the facility and explore options for developing the area around it.  Before Covid struck, the authority had a plan to use revenue from a tourism tax to pay for upgrades estimated in 2019 to cost as much as $200 million. At the time, the[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 8

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Why wait until Monday? You can get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading — and a recap of Investigative Post’s reporting the previous week — first thing Sunday by subscribing here. Roswell Park’s favorite Russian oligarch — and business partner — is trying hard to avoid sanctions. The chain that owns The Buffalo News is catching heat for cutting newsroom jobs, although not here. Yet, anyway. Ken Kruly has a smart read on redistricting, which is presently a mess. Yet another study has found New York’s reformed bail laws have little to nothing to do with rising crime rates. There’s a new nonprofit news organization covering New[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 5

2022

First impressions of Brown’s budget

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Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed city budget is awash in federal pandemic relief funds. It’s bolstered by the restoration of long withheld Seneca casino money. And, on top of those windfalls, Brown has proposed a property tax hike for only the second time since he took office in 2006. The city needs all the money it can get. Operating costs keep rising. For example, among the spending increases in Brown’s budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins July 1: Police spending would rise $5.4 million, an increase of 6.3 percent. Most of that would pay for 45 new officers. Some[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post