Patrick Lakamp and James Heaney "Failed Empire" The Buffalo News, June 8-11, 2003.

• Position: The Washington Monthly's Monthly Journalism Award - Brief Article

In a four-part series. Patrick Lakamp and James Heaney document, in impressive detail the breakdown of former Congessman Jack Kemp's dream of economic enterprise zones in Kemp's hometown of Buffalo and elsewhere. The tax breaks are still massive, but because of backroom political deal-making, the city "is using its richest development package to provide tax breaks to some of the city's biggest corporations and most influential business executives," and, after a decade and a half with a pricetag to taxpayers of $200 million each year, the project has lured no new businesses to Buffalo and created virtually no new jobs for working-class Buffalonians. But Heaney and Lakamp, in riveting detail reach out beyond their hometown and show how enterprise zones across the country have been comparable failures, devolving into tax giveaway programs for politically connected firms with no attached promises of new jobs.

The...