Don’t want to keep you on tenterhooks: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s state budget announcement yesterday indeed included no mention of funding for a Buffalo Bills stadium. And afterwards, state and county officials said that yes, the plan is still to add it later, possibly at the last possible second before the April 1 budget deadline as fans of transparent democracy have worried about:
“There hasn’t been any determination because we don’t have a dollar number of what the contribution would be yet,” [state budget director Robert] Mujica said. “Those talks are ongoing. There’s not an appropriation for that.”
Gov. Hochul previously said she’s confident the state, Erie County and the Bills could get a deal done by the end of March, before the Legislature is required to approve a budget. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz deferred when asked directly if he was confident it would be on time for the budget.
“I’m confident the Bills will beat the Chiefs, that’s about all I’m going to add with regards to the negotiations. As I said, it’s a complicated transaction and it’s better to get it right than to just say we’re going to get it done by an arbitrary timeline,” he said.
Okay then! One might think that “getting it right” for a potential billion-dollar stadium subsidy would include submitting it to the legislature in time to examine the deal’s pros and cons before a vote, but that’s clearly not how these folks think. Or, to be fair, maybe the stadium talks are going poorly and Hochul and Poloncarz are trying to put a happy face on it, though then wouldn’t it make sense to use the budget deadline as leverage to get the Bills owners to agree to a deal sooner or else wait till 2023? I definitely don’t think like an elected official.
This would all be good stuff for the local press to focus on, but the longest article about Hochul’s budget announcement and the Bills stadium that I can find is the one linked above from Spectrum News, and it spent half of its ten paragraphs talking about how much money New Yorkers spent on placing bets on the Bills in the first week of legalized sports gambling in New York, without discussing whether any of the resulting state tax revenue might be redirected from other legal gambling. Where can I go to place bets on whether the New York news media will do a real analysis of any last-minute Bills stadium proposal in the time available? Or would the Vegas odds on that be too sad to make it worth it?
Neil, I think you’re aware that the Bills stadium deal is going to be a turd (at least, from the stadium-hater’s perspective). I don’t see how it would make sense for the Bills to agree to anything that doesn’t include the state paying about half the actual stadium’s cost, plus all the cost of infrastructure.
Austin fits well in the AFC South, plus a move would allow the Colts to move back into a division with their old rivals Miami, New England and the Jets.
Even without the Bills relocating to the South, I’ve always thought the Dolphins, instead of the Colts, should have been placed in the newly formed AFC South division when realignment took place in 2002. The Dolphins are much farther south, reducing travel time, and they would have formed a geographical rivalry with the Jaguars. The current South division (Colts, Titans, Texans, and Jaguars) is sorely lacking in rivalries and interest. Plus, the Colts and Patriots were just starting their rivalry during the Manning-Brady era. Perhaps the division swap can still be done?
In a league where Dallas has always played in the NFC east (for a long period of time with the St. Louis Cardinals as well) while Tampa played in the Central and Atlanta played in the West, let us not pretend that geographic alignments mean anything at all.
St. Louis also had a team in the west division for a decade or two… but they’ve never been in the central division have they?
There is significant value to the league to having southern teams in as many divisions as is practical… the Dolphins, for example, allow two (or more if necessary) northern AFC east teams to not have to play home games in December if desired.