Categories for PoliticalPost

Sep 3

2019

Turning a blind eye to environmental risks

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You’d think that the construction of a million square feet of manufacturing space on a brownfield along the Buffalo River would warrant a thorough environmental investigation before shovels bit into the soil. And you’d be wrong. The Tesla plant in South Buffalo was built on a former Superfund site — once home to Republic Steel, Donner Hanna Coke and Feine Steel, among other historic industrial polluters. The site borders the environmental debacle that was (and is) the Hickory Woods residential development, which was poisoned by the use as fill of toxic materials created by those plants. Prior to its purchase[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Aug 11

2019

A problematic downtown development project

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The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. —T. S. Eliot When one Western New York developer sues another, the motive — no matter the arguments presented in court, however they may be presented in the media as a pursuit of the public good — is of course money. It has to be: To have standing to sue, a petitioner must demonstrate a financial or quality-of-life interest to the court. So, when Rocco Termini sued Ciminelli Development in mid-June to stop Ciminelli’s latest plan for 201 Ellicott Street, naturally Termini had a financial motive:[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Aug 6

2019

Comptrollers behaving badly, Part 2

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On June 21, Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw issued an invitation to Department of Motor Vehicles employees across the state: If you disagree with the new “Green Light” law, under which New York State will soon issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, and you suspect such a person is applying for a license, call or email the Erie County Comptroller’s Whistleblower Hotline. Mychajliw promised he would forward anonymous tips gathered therein to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Two weeks earlier, at the request of Erie County Clerk Mickey Kearns, Mychajliw issued a report “regarding the consequences of granting licenses[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Aug 5

2019

Comptrollers behaving badly, Part 1

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On the website of the Buffalo city comptroller, the top tab on the left — the place of pride — is occupied by the word “Transparency.” I guess that’s meant to be ironic. Click on that tab, and follow the prompts to the page titled “Financial Reports,” and you’ll soon discover what I mean. In the last week or so, Barbara Miller-Williams, the interim comptroller who is running unopposed for a full term in November, wiped that page clean of critical reports created and published by the staff of her predecessor, Mark Schroeder. Buy tickets now to iPost benefit featuring[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jul 24

2019

Dixon’s push poll, continued

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A couple Sundays ago, Buffalo News politics columnist Bob McCarthy wrote, in essence, that I got it all wrong in my June 19 piece about Lynne Dixon’s push poll. I don’t know that I did. I don’t think McCarthy knows that I did, either. Dixon is challenging incumbent Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. In early June, her campaign commissioned a poll of 1,325 likely voters. I first read about the poll in McCarthy’s June 16 story, which touted the Dixon campaign’s conclusion that the race was a statistical tie — a good sign for the underdog. Naturally, I wanted to[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jun 26

2019

Apathy, Democratic HQ winners in primary

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Back in January, this looked to be a dynamic election cycle for Buffalo Democrats.  There were two long-time incumbents vacating their seats on the city’s Common Council and two more leaving the Erie County Legislature, creating the potential for wide-open races.  That doesn’t happen often. In response, a host of candidates signaled their intention to run and began circulating nominating petitions in the bitter grip of midwinter.  Many of these prospects were entering electoral politics for the first time, driven by a variety motivations: a wish to elect women to the all-male Council, for one example; for another, a desire[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jun 19

2019

Lynne Dixon’s misleading push poll

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If you follow local politics, and bless your heart if you do, you might have heard about a poll showing incumbent Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz in a statistical tie with his challenger, Erie County Legislator Lynne Dixon. The top-line conclusion of the poll, which was commissioned by Dixon’s campaign: Of the 1,325 respondents, 42 percent said they’d vote for Poloncarz if the election were held today; 40 percent said they’d vote for Dixon; and 18 percent said they were undecided. The margin of error is listed as 3.5 percent — thus, a statistical tie. The race might be that[...]

Posted 6 years ago

May 30

2019

Troubling signs from Buffalo’s comptroller

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Well, she went ahead and did it. There was no good reason to do it, but she did it anyway. Interim Buffalo Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams has issued an amendment to her own office’s critical assessment of Mayor Byron Brown’s projected 2019-2020 budget. The initial comptroller’s response was released on May 10, the deadline for the comptroller’s office to issue its response to the mayor’s annual budget proposal, according to the city charter. This new, amended response is dated May 15 and wasn’t submitted to the Common Council until a week after that — too late to count. But let that[...]

Posted 6 years ago
Investigative Post