Mar 22
2013
Gov. Cuomo’s administration gets a luxury suite at Buffalo Bills games in the deal to renovate Ralph Wilson Stadium for $130 million—three-quarters of which is state and Erie County funding. Empire State Development Corporation, a state economic development authority, will control the suite “to show off Buffalo.” A report in The New York Times.
Mar 12
2013
Dr. Sanjay Gupta made more than $500,000 from drug companies since 2009, according to a ProPublica database. He is a consulting psychiatrist at GreenField Health and Rehabilitation Center, according to his Linkedin account. This puts him in the top 22 of all doctors nationwide.
Mar 12
2013
Health Commissioner Shah says he could have a decision to the governor in a few weeks on whether to allow hydraulic fracturing. Neither the governor nor Shah said they need to wait for the results of a study that will look at health histories of scores of people living near natural gas wells.
Feb 20
2013
The Florida-based owners of the duty free store on the Buffalo side of the Peace Bridge are big-time operators with more than 100 stores here and abroad. They’re also big-time donors to politicians in both the United States and Israel with contributions approaching $1.8 million, although none of the money has funneled into Western New York. Their company, Duty Free Americas, stands to potentially profit by an expansion of the Peace Bridge plaza on the Buffalo side. The expansion would likely require the duty free store to relocate, presumably into bigger, better and more profitable quarters on the Episcopal Church Home campus[...]
Feb 11
2013
The practice of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas may not take place here in Western New York, but is the waste from it potentially headed this way? A report by the Niagara Gazette.
Feb 8
2013
Investigative Post and WGRZ team up to report on Buffalo Comptroller Mark Schroeder’s concern, and Mayor Byron Brown’s response, over the continuing use of reserve funds to balance the city budget.
Feb 5
2013
You know this: Buffalo-area commuters are stuck in traffic a lot less than their counterparts in many other large cities. What you probably don’t know: Buffalonians are sitting in traffic a lot longer than they used to. The 2012 Urban Mobility Report issued by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute considered traffic congestion in the nation’s 101 largest metropolitan areas. The report includes slews of tables from which we gleaned a few highlights, Buffalo-area motorists spent an average of 33 hours in traffic due to congestion, ranking the region No. 45. The average in comparable large metro areas is 37 hours.[...]
Feb 4
2013
Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to cap binding arbitration rulings involving public employee union contracts working for local governments deemed in “fiscal distress”. Localities would earn this dubious distinction if their reserves represent less than 5 percent of their operating budgets if their tax rates rank among the state’s top quartile. The Albany Times Union has a good primer, including a table listing the status of each county, city, town and village in the state. Investigative Post has broken out the list for Erie and Niagara counties. The bottom line for the locals: 23 of 75 units of government are defined as in[...]