Sep 17
2013
Public universities direct a larger share of their financial aid to students from well-off families than to those hailing from low-income backgrounds. A report from ProPublica.
Sep 16
2013
The Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality altered reports and made blanket statements that lacked sufficient data and analysis. A report from The Center for Public Integrity.
Sep 15
2013
Sep 13
2013
Sep 13
2013
If you drove to work above the speed limit would you call the police to report that you were speeding? What if all laws were enforced only through such self-reporting? Sounds crazy, right? In essence, this is largely how the Department of Environmental Conservation operates, especially after drastic staffing cuts that have limited the agency’s ability to enforce environmental laws, according to a new report from Environmental Advocates of New York. The report is critical of the DEC’s recent track record on inspections and enforcement. The nonprofit’s report shows how environmental enforcement in New York is on the decline because of staffing[...]
Sep 12
2013
Sep 11
2013
Buffalo residents have recycled for more than 20 years. But only until recently have employees in City Hall. These new recycling containers appeared in City Hall about a month ago. Investigative Post examined the city’s anemic recycling program with this story in February. Since then the city has made several moves to improve the program. Most notably, Public Works on May 2 hired Susan Attridge as the recycling coordinator, a position that had sat vacant since 2009. The new recycling containers are on each floor of City Hall.
Sep 11
2013
Anyone who has followed my work the past dozen years knows I am not a fan of economic development subsidies. And the deal announced Tuesday of a manufacturing plant involves a lot of public money – some $25.9 million over the next decade in grants, tax breaks and power discounts. That works out to nearly $151,000 per job, which ranks this as one of the region’s richest subsidy deals ever. It’s not the obscene $2.1 million per job subsidy awarded a few years back to Yahoo’s data center in Lockport. But it’s more than all but a handful of deals[...]