Breaking

In a major Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) case, a state Supreme Court justice in Manhattan today ruled that the names of retired New York City police officers receiving public pensions must be released to the Empire Center for Public Policy. Over

BY NORBERT RUG There have been a series of coincidences in my life. My buddy grew up in a house full of girls in Amherst. One of them dated a Harley driving, leather vested, Vietnam-veteran biker from Barker. They went

BY BRIAN KOLB Summer always seems to go by in the blink of an eye. Before we know it, the days are shorter, the air is cooler and it’s time to send our children back to school. This change of

Advocacy, legislative work on local environmental issues in Montgomery County cited Albany-area Congressman Paul D. Tonko is congratulating Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara again received an A+ rating from the New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV) for his legislative work on

In a widely circulated statement, New York Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy is telling Senator Kirstin Gillibrand to get back to work following her recently ended four-year pursuit of the presidency. “Kirsten Gillibrand has been using her U.S. Senate office

Niagara Falls State Park is certainly a lucrative and, some would argue, it is an underperforming asset.  Presently, the State Parks system does a very poor job programing the parks during the winter season — which is especially true at

BY NORBERT RUG I contributed to global warming a tiny bit more than usual recently. When we moved in to our home over 40 years ago there were two maple trees and an ash tree that provided shade in the

Congressman Tom Reed is calling on the United States Department of Justice to investigate Governor Andrew Cuomo‘s dealings with the Seneca Nation of Indians.  Reed thinks that, by withholding federal funds with such obvious malice against the Nation, the Governor

BY KEN GIRARDIN The Cuomo administration appears to have violated state law by forcing offshore wind developers to cut deals with construction unions, inflating costs and boxing out non-union subcontractors on billions in construction work. Bidders seeking state subsidies likely worth

Sources tell The Chronicle that influential members of the Seneca Nation of Indians are encouraging former President Robert Odawi Porter, a Harvard educated attorney, to challenge Rep. Brian Higgins in the Democratic Party primary. Higgins’ support inside the district has been

Community organizer Duncan Kirkwood slammed Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz for his allegedly weak progressive credentials in a widely read Buffalo News editorial last month.  It’s just the latest friction between the County Executive and Buffalo’s African American community. Poloncarz is not

Democrats have an idea to make bumper-to-bumper traffic worse: tax drivers more when they’re sitting in traffic.  Incoming House Transportation Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is planning to propose a new tax that would penalize drivers by taxing them at a higher rate

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden said he’d like to raise the capital gains tax rate to 39.6 percent, a near doubling of the current 20 percent.  Biden made the remarks on Wednesday, August 21 during an interview with Iowa Public

Whitehouse filed a brief with U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of four clients while maintaining inactive status and that the brief was nothing more than an attack on the federal judiciary and an open threat to the U.S. Supreme Court 

An Obama-appointed federal judge is forcing Wisconsin taxpayers to provide costly sex reassignment surgery and hormonal procedures for low-income transgender residents who get free medical care from the government. In a recently issued ruling U.S. District Judge William M. Conley writes that Medicaid,

U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the FBI to conduct a search within 60 days for records of communications with former British spy and dossier author Christopher Steele post-dating Steele’s service as an FBI confidential source. In ordering the supplemental search,

Employees of the troubled New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) pulled down $96 million in overtime payments in fiscal 2019, according to data posted today on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s government transparency website.Base pay and overtime for NYCHA employees are part of

A Buffalo detective was the highest-paid municipal employee (excluding school districts) in Western New York during the 2019 fiscal year, according to the latest edition of “What They Make,” the Empire Center’s annual report summarizing total local government pay. Scott R. Malec,