Categories for In-Depth

Jan 31

2022

Councilmen violating campaign finance law

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Three of Buffalo’s Common Council members are behind on filing campaign finance disclosure statements, the latest of which was due Jan. 18. Or, rather, they were behind.  When Investigative Post started asking about their missing filings last week, at least two of them began trying to catch up. When we checked the state election board’s online records shortly after the Jan. 18 deadline, we found two city legislators — Rasheed Wyatt and Ulysees Wingo — hadn’t filed since 2019.  That was the last year Buffalo Council members were on the ballot. A third, David Rivera, hadn’t filed since July 2020.[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 28

2022

CBA proponents here seeking first win

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Third in a three-part series. Western New York has never adopted a community benefits agreement the likes of which is being proposed for a new Buffalo Bills stadium. Twice, coalitions of community groups and elected officials have tried to attach CBAs to big, taxpayer-funded development projects in Buffalo. Those efforts — the first for Canalside, the second for the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus — yielded mixed results: Both campaigns coaxed concessions from developers, but neither yielded the kind of legally binding agreement that has become common in other communities across the country over the past 20 years.  Now, many of[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 27

2022

Linking community benefits to a Bills stadium

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This is the second of a three-day series in our continuing in-depth coverage of issues related to a proposed stadium for the Buffalo Bills. Erie County Legislature Chair April Baskin doesn’t concern herself with whether a new Buffalo Bills stadium will be built in Buffalo or Orchard Park.  She’s not particularly worried about its cost. What matters most, Baskin told Investigative Post, is what the community gets in exchange for the taxpayer dollars the team’s owners want from the state and county.  Pegula Sports and Entertainment has made it clear the team expects significant public subsidies — as much as[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 25

2022

How a stadium can benefit the community

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This is the first of a three-day series in our continuing in-depth coverage of issues related to a proposed stadium for the Buffalo Bills. Before the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers broke ground last summer on a new arena, the team’s owners, elected officials and civic groups made certain the $1.8 billion project would benefit the entire community. In September 2020, the parties signed a community benefits agreement, or CBA, that outlined who would get jobs and contracts during and after construction, how much those jobs would pay, what the project would look like, and how the city and its residents[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 17

2022

The hidden costs of housing the Bills

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There was a time when Erie County made money from Buffalo Bills games in Orchard Park.  From the opening of the football stadium in 1973 through 1997, the county collected millions of dollars from parking, concessions and the sale of stadium naming rights. No more.  Erie County in 1998 made major concessions that gave all the revenue from parking, concessions and naming rights to the Bills.  The county and New York State also agreed to take on a host of expenses previously covered by the Bills, ranging from stadium maintenance to the cost of ushers and ticket takers. The bottom[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 10

2022

Buffalo schools struggle to catch up

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 Most students attending Buffalo public schools had fallen behind academically before the pandemic struck. Only a quarter of elementary and middle school students received proficient scores on their state standardized tests for reading, writing and math.  The learning gap got worse when instruction went remote in March 2020 and continued through most of last school year, when only one-third of students attended class regularly. Yet, the district only held back 546 of its 29,918 students for the school year that started in September. Most of them were high schoolers. Only 43 pupils in the elementary grades were held back.[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 5

2022

Samsung turned down subsidies worth $1.9B

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Think the $950 million the state doled out to build and equip a factory for Tesla in South Buffalo was a lot of money? State and local officials offered Samsung twice as much to build a semiconductor plant in rural Genesee County. The $1.9 billion subsidy package would have been the second-largest deal in state history if the company had accepted it. It ranks high nationally, as well. “It would be right in the top dozen of all time in U.S. history,” according to Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a national subsidy watchdog group.  Still, New York’s[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Dec 30

2021

One inspection of grain elevator in 28 years

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Since it bought the Great Northern grain elevator in 1993, ADM Milling Co. has told city officials at least three times the iconic Ganson Street structure needs to come down.  Each time, to justify its request for a demolition permit, the company has commissioned and filed with the city — and most recently with the state Supreme Court — engineering reports and affidavits outlining the building’s alleged structural deficiencies and the danger it poses to the public. And yet, city inspectors have never in those 28 years demanded the company repair the problems those reports detail. The city has never[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post