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Mar 8

2023

Union busting hamstrings adoption agency

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The complicated process of adopting a child was upended last year after Western New York’s largest adoption agency lost a third of its staff, an exodus triggered by what one labor attorney called the worst case of union busting she has seen. Adoption STAR, founded in 2000 in Amherst, fired four staff members last April who were attempting to organize a union. The firings resulted in an exodus of the agency’s staff — 13 out of approximately three dozen employees. The departures included the agency’s executive director — who left a month after the firings — and an associate director.[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Mar 6

2023

Bonuses for executives at embattled OTB

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Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. awarded $40,000 in bonuses to its top executives in January, even as federal and state investigators continued a probe into allegations of malfeasance at the public benefit corporation. At OTB’s January 19 board meeting, the 13 directors present voted unanimously to award a bonus of $12,000 to Henry Wojtaszek, president and chief executive officer. Including the bonus awarded by the board, Wojtaszek is making more than $200,000 in salary, plus benefits. The board also awarded bonuses of $6,000 each to Scott Kiedrowski and William White, both vice presidents, and $6,000 to Jacquelyne Leach, chief financial[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Mar 5

2023

Monday Morning Read

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WeeklyPost is a free newsletter emailed to subscribers Sunday mornings. It includes a recap of Investigative Post’s reporting from the previous week and a sampling of stories from other news outlets that caught Jim Heaney’s eye. (See below.) Subscribe here. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s push to increase the state’s already generous tax credits for film and television production has generated a lot of controversy. The City, a nonprofit based in NYC, takes a look at the issue in a good piece of reporting. A second Hochul-supported subsidy, this one for horse racing at Belmont Park, is the subject of a New York Post story.[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Mar 2

2023

No permits for work that might have sparked deadly fire

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The fire that killed a Buffalo firefighter Wednesday might have been sparked by crews working on the Main Street building without permits. A review of city records by Investigative Post found no active permits for work at 743 Main St., which was recently purchased by a company owned by former Congressman Chris Jacobs. Michael DeGeorge, spokesman for Mayor Byron Brown, confirmed that the city’s Department of Permits and Inspection Services had “no active or valid permits” on file. The most recent work permit the city issued for 743 Main Street was last April, for emergency repairs to the three-storey building’s[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Mar 2

2023

The latest Buffalo News woes

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Lee Enterprises, the parent company of The Buffalo News, has filed its overdue annual  financial report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its failure to meet a filing deadline, due to what Lee said was its failure to “maintain effective internal control over financial reporting,” prompted a threat in December from the Nasdaq Stock Market to delist the company. That would mean no more stock sales for the publicly traded company.  So it’s good news that Lee has finally complied. There’s not a lot of good news in its 10-K report, however, certainly not enough to allay fears about what’s[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Feb 28

2023

City keeping $3.6M of other people’s money

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In 2019, the City of Buffalo sold 103 properties seized for nonpayment of taxes and fees.  The annual auction yielded $4.3 million that year, far more than the $700,000 the former owners of those properties owed the city. Those former owners were supposed to be able to apply for their share of the surplus $3.6 million — which represents their remaining equity in those properties — through a program developed by the city’s law department and published on the city’s website in late 2021.  Many former property owners filed claims. None received any money, as Investigative Post reported in October. [...]

Posted 2 years ago

Feb 27

2023

Yet another Roswell lawsuit alleging bias

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A former Roswell Park physician claims she was fired by the cancer treatment center for calling attention to practices that “put numerous patients in serious danger,” according to a lawsuit filed in federal court. Dr. Anne Grand’Maison’s federal whistleblower lawsuit alleges her warnings were dismissed and her work at Roswell undermined due to “a work environment which was hostile to female physicians in innumerable ways.”  Hers is one of more than a dozen lawsuits filed in the last eight years by Roswell doctors and other employees alleging workplace discrimination based on gender, race or disability. Grand’Maison’s lawsuit alleges: Pathology reports[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Feb 26

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost, if you don’t already. There’s more heat being applied to industrial development agencies. We’ve already reported on reform legislation being championed by Sen. Sean Ryan. Last week, the Albany Times Union reported that the chairman of the Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations is launching an investigation into how IDA’s dole out tax breaks. Sen. James Skoufis is hot and bothered by a deal in Orange County. He’s likely to blow a gasket if he looks into the deals approved of late by the Niagara County IDA, subsidies for everything from fast food restaurants to market rate housing to a warehouse for Amazon, which[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post