by Frank Parlato Only the Niagara Falls Reporter called it right, back in April 2013, when we reported on the $30 million Yahoo! taxpayer subsidized deal and called people “naive” who thought that Niagara County non profits would get any money in return for local taxpayers giving the giant InternetRead More

by Frank Parlato Consider how stupid this is: All told, Yahoo! will get $30 million in county and state sales and property tax breaks, credits against state income taxes and 7,200 kilowatts of half-priced electricity from the New York Power Authority (NYPA). These giveaways – which will be subsidized byRead More

by Mike Hudson The $400,000 paid to Warshaw and Associates to transform the Niagara Falls City Police Department into a kinder, gentler organization under an agreement reached between Mayor Paul Dyster and former Attorney General and current Governor Andrew Cuomo five years ago may just be the tip of theRead More

by James Hufnagel National Fuel supplies natural gas to over 730,000 residential and corporate customers throughout Western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. The Williamsville, NY-based oil and gas concern is vertically integrated across five business divisions: Exploration & Production, Pipeline & Storage, Gathering, Utility, and Energy Marketing, all operating largelyRead More

by Mike Hudson They said it couldn’t be done. Or, rather, they said it wouldn’t be done. When leaders of the Seneca Nation of Indians were gifted with 50 acres of prime real estate in the city’s tourist district, along with the multimillion dollar convention center for use as aRead More

by Mike Hudson Back at the dawn of the new century, the Niagara Falls Reporter was a lone voice in the wilderness, daring to ask the question others dodged. Would a gas station and smoke shop operation be part of the Seneca Nation’s master plan for the development of theRead More

by James Hufnagel Even though the Niagara Falls City Council, the Niagara County Legislature and the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area board all passed unanimous resolutions requesting that the famous sculpture of inventor Nikola Tesla be gifted to the city of Niagara Falls and installed at a place of honorRead More

by Mike Hudson Get your mind out of the gutter! When people in Niagara Falls think of Lou Avino, they think of gutters. For more than 40 years Lou’s been climbing the ladder of success onto the rooftops of Cataract City homes, cleaning the gutters befouled by the leaves droppedRead More

by Tony Farina We have learned that State Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman is expected to impanel a special grand jury in Buffalo on Monday (May 9) with the sole purpose of investigating former Erie County Democratic Chairman Steve Pigeon’s political activities, a continuing probe that follows the seizure nearly aRead More

Here is a question/problem a reader asked: My name is M.A. I had an auto accident in 2014. The other driver was at fault. I went to an attorney who advertises on billboards [I don’t want to mention his name]. My attorney said he won’t charge me a fee unlessRead More

by J. Gary Dilaura Congratulations Donald Trump on doing what you have done before. You did the impossible this time and are now the presumptive Republican Candidate for President of the United States of America! I began calling for the support of Mr. Trump in the Niagara Falls Reporter inRead More

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“Baby Shawn” Kennedy is a happy 5-year-old boy with a big problem. He is full of life and always smiling, but has been diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), a very aggressive cancer located on his brain stem.

Businessman Dave Bieksza, who owns a commercial property at 259 24th Street, has been battling the Niagara Falls Water Board for five years over what the board refers to as an “availability fee,” $20 a month charged to property owners in the city who have no water service.

Although the Dyster administration has had more than five years to come to an agreement with Amtrak and the Underground Railroad Interpretive Center for use of the new, $44 million train station on Whirlpool Street, market the facility to other prospective tenants and come up with a budget to run the place, it has done none of those things.

Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster hasn’t said a word about the $44 million train station he built on Whirlpool Street in weeks, leaving public pronouncements about the project to his associate, City Planner Thomas DeSantis.

When the Niagara Falls Reporter broke the story of city Councilwoman Kristen Grandinetti’s draconian anti-cat legislation here a couple of weeks ago, we had no idea that she would become the target of harassment and threats from cat lovers across the country.

The ways in which the Niagara Frontier, and the city of Niagara Falls in particular, has been ripped off for decades by Albany has been a recurring theme for the Niagara Falls Reporter since the paper was founded 16 years ago.

By the time the Niagara Falls State Park Landscape Improvements plan and south Robert Moses Parkway upgrade are finished sometime next year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo will have spent $70 million derived from Niagara Greenway, “Buffalo Billion” and “NY Works” economic development programs. That’s more than $140 for every man, woman and child living in the city of Niagara Falls.

Since The Reporter broke a story about illegal dumping at a city-operated composting facility last week, the State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has launched an investigation into the illegal dumping. On the same day, last Thursday, Department of Public Works supervisors instructed employees to put sweeper dirt in dumpsters rather than atop mounds already at the composting site.