Categories for Outrages & Insights

Dec 11

2018

Buffalo Billion criminals get off easy

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Hold up a gas station and you’re looking at a minimum of five years in prison. Get napped with an ounce of crack and the mandatory minimum is five to ten years. Engage in bid rigging, and in the process violate the public’s trust and cost taxpayers potentially million of dollars? If you’re Louis Ciminelli, the sentence is 2 years and 4 months. For Alain Kaloyeros, 3½ years. Minus time off for good behavior, of course. And don’t worry about starting your sentence anytime soon. You’re a free man until you and your high-priced lawyers have exhausted the appeals process.[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Aug 22

2018

Buffalo’s roadblock to reform

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A lot of issues scream for reform in Albany: ethics, campaign finance, cash bail. But nothing rivals state contracting practices, not in the wake of the corruption convictions of Alain Kaloyeros and three developers who contributed heavily to Andrew Cuomo’s gubernatorial campaign, including Lou Ciminelli of Buffalo. Yet here we are, 21 months after the indictments, two months after the convictions, with no reform. Yes, Cuomo has proposed a handful of changes, but they satisfy practically no one. Meanwhile, a trio of bills sit stalled in the Assembly, a victim of Speaker Carl Heastie’s willingness to appease the governor by[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Jul 12

2018

Buffalo Billion verdicts warrant further action

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Alain Kaloyeros has been known as many things during his career. Dr. K. Near genius. Nanotech guru. And as of Thursday, convicted criminal. Ditto for Lou Ciminelli. Civic leader. Power broker. Philanthropist. And yes, convicted felon. Down the list of defendants we go. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. And, at the risk of repeating myself, guilty. It was a good day for clean contracting, for good government. But the job is far from done. Testimony during the trial established that the governor’s office installed Todd Howe, a longtime Cuomo associate, as the administration’s “eyes and ears” inside the operation that Kaloyeros headed[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Jun 28

2018

Cuomo flunkies cross the line

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A former Cuomo flak testified the other day that another of the governor’s minions attempted several years ago to dissuade donors from continuing their support of Investigative Post in retaliation for its reporting on corruption in the Buffalo Billion program. “There was an effort made by people that Todd [Howe] knew that had donated to Investigative Post in the past, there was an effort to get them to stop doing that,” said David Doyle, a former spokesman for Alain Kaloyeros, the disgraced nanotech guru on trial along with three developers who just so happened to be major contributors to Cuomo’s[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Mar 15

2018

Cuomo is guilty at some level

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Andrew Cuomo is all worked up over the suggestion that the conviction of Joseph Percoco, his former right-hand man, reflects poorly on the governor and his administration. Cuomo dismissed the linkage as “political garbage” and maintained “there was absolutely no suggestion ever made (during the trial) that I had anything to do with anything.’’ That’s a pretty amazing statement coming from someone with a reputation as a hands-on control freak. Yes, the governor has been neither charged with nor convicted of any wrongdoing. But he is ultimately responsible for the scandals involving state economic development programs and the general sleaze[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Jan 17

2018

Derenda leaves behind a mess at police HQ

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Yesterday, Daniel Derenda was Buffalo police commissioner. Today, out of the blue, he’s retired. The lack of public notice has some people, including me, wondering if there’s more than what meets the eye. I mean, who announces their retirement the day they walk out the door, especially the guy in charge? This much is certain: He leaves behind a police department that is, well, kind of a mess. Some he inherited, others cropped up on his watch. Most telling, perhaps, are the cases of Wardel Davis, Jose Hernandez-Rossy and Craig Lehner. Davis and Hernandez-Rossy died last year during encounters with[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Nov 3

2017

Buffalo lawmakers seek to contain reporters

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We recently announced an event that will explore how hostile government officials at the federal, state and local level have become to the press, and by extension, the public’s right to know. As if on cue, Darius Pridgen and his colleagues on the Buffalo Common Council underscored that hostility Friday by announcing steps intended to put reporters in their place. In the process, they made themselves look kind of silly, to say nothing of petty. The directive, outlined in a press release you can read here, said the Council will require reporters to sit in a designated area in the[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Sep 13

2017

Assessing Buffalo’s mayoral primary

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A win is a win, and Byron Brown certainly did that Tuesday, capturing a little more than half the vote in a three-way Democratic primary for mayor. The victory sets Brown up for a fourth term, equalling the tenure of Jimmy Griffin. That’s about where the good news ends for the mayor. The numbers are not otherwise kind. Let’s start with his 13,346 votes – the lowest of his four primary runs and little more than half of his total eight years ago. (Mickey Kearns garnered more votes eight years ago in losing to Brown in a landslide. Think about it.)[...]

Posted 8 years ago
Investigative Post