Tag: Transparency

Jan 14

2022

Board of Elections fail transparency test

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When a good government group decided to test whether county election boards comply with the state’s open government laws, the first hurdle was getting someone – anyone – at those boards to answer an email or a phone call. It wasn’t easy. Last summer the New York Coalition for Open Government — a group that tracks government agencies’ compliance with freedom of information and open meetings laws — emailed 17 county election boards across the state to ask how often commissioners held meetings, whether those meetings were publicized, and whether meeting agendas and meetings were posted online. In many cases[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 12

2021

Transparency, City Hall style

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Editor’s note: Phil Gambini is working on a story about sewage and stormwater runoff that flows into local creeks and rivers. Municipalities are required under state law to track the volume of these pollutants, but data reported by the Buffalo Sewer Authority does not identify discharge points or, in many cases, the amount of wastewater that flows into individual waterways. Gambini has been attempting to reach the Sewer Authority since the middle of May to make sense of the incomplete data. He documents his efforts below.  There’s many ways to reach Oluwole “O.J.” McFoy, general manager at the Buffalo Sewer[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Mar 30

2018

UB students rally to demand divestment

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Dozens of University at Buffalo students rallied Thursday, calling for the university’s foundation to divest from fossil fuels. UB has positioned itself as a leader on green initiatives, even as the private and technically separate UB foundation has invested in funds that back fracking companies, according to documents leaked as part of the Paradise Papers, Investigative Post reported last year.  The Fossil Free UB campaign, which organized the protest, has earned support from the representative bodies for both both the faculty and professional staff, as well as student government. In response to the divestment campaign, the foundation has said it is “actively looking”[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Jun 22

2016

More stonewalling, then vote for transparency

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Fort Schuyler Management Corp., the state-controlled development agency that is overseeing a number of major state-funded construction projects, including SolarCity, barred reporters from covering its board meeting Tuesday. Jim Heaney of Investigative Post tells Scott Levin about his experiences trying to obtain public records from Fort Schuyler. The nonprofit development corporation subsequently voted to adhere to the state Open Meetings Law and its board chairman suggested it will adhere to the Freedom of Information Laws, as well, although no vote was apparently taken. The New York Committee on Open Government had previously said it was obliged to honor the FOI[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Oct 1

2015

Cuomo stonewalling goes from bad to worse

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I’ve documented – more than once – efforts by the Cuomo administration to obstruct our reporting of the Buffalo Billion. But the tactics employed by the Cuomo crowd during the course of Charlotte Keith’s reporting of her story on the lack of diversity at the SolarCity construction site represent a new low. Once again, state officials refused to grant interviews, but this time they came up with a novel reason. Peter Cutler, the temperamental spokesman for the Buffalo office of the Empire State Development Corp., objected to who Charlotte was interviewing for her story. She had the audacity to talk[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Aug 6

2015

Outer Harbor plans shrouded in secrecy

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The Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation is again the subject of transparency complaints over its planning effort for the Outer Harbor. Board member Sam Hoyt had said the state would unveil a revised development plan at two public meetings in April. The development corporation controls some 200 acres of lakefront at the Outer Harbor. But those public meetings never happened. Instead, Investigative Post has learned that state officials have held at least two secret brainstorming sessions. Some who attended had been critical of the state’s first Outer Harbor plan released last fall. That plan included up to 2,100 housing units, stores and restaurants. But Assemblyman Sean Ryan, U.S. Rep. Brian[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 28

2015

State relents on Buffalo Billion records

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I interrupt the state’s incessant stonewalling of my efforts to use public records to track the Buffalo Billion program to report some progress. Cuomo administration officials, for more than a year, refused to release documents related to the selection of LPCiminelli to develop SolarCity’s sprawling plant in South Buffalo. The SUNY Research Foundation and the Fort Schuyler Management Corp. went to great lengths to thwart my efforts to obtain records under the state Freedom of Information Law, as I documented in December. Alain Kaloyeros and his associates at Fort Schuyler wouldn’t budge when the state Committee on Open Government issued[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jun 22

2015

Shenanigans beset Buffalo Billion

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Editors note: A version of the following story published this past weekend in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Albany Times Union, Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, and Poughkeepsie Journal. The accompanying video was co-produced with WGRZ.  Editorials calling for greater transparency in the program were subsequently published by the Democrat & Chronicle and Times Union. The Buffalo Billion program championed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo is a bold and costly experiment in economic development that is beset by secrecy and politics, and banking on a company with a history of losing money. The program — hailed in Buffalo but resented across much of the rest of New[...]

Posted 10 years ago
Investigative Post