Hochul hints she could do end run around legislature for Bills stadium money

There are now ten days left before the New York state budget needs to be finalized, and Gov. Kathy Hochul is still insisting that this is plenty of time to announce and debate a plan to commit state funding to a $1.4 billion-ish Buffalo Bills stadium. Here she is at a press conference yesterday, for example:

Reporter: Is it the right time right now to spend potentially a billion dollars in taxpayer funding on a Buffalo Bills stadium?

Hochul: Where did you hear it was a billion dollars for the Buffalo Bills?

Reporter: It’s been reported, but it’s not a—

Hochul: Okay. I would say, not negotiating in public. All will be told at the right time. Thank you.

The nerve of that reporter, asking about the stadium’s reported $1 billion public cost when the governor has refused to confirm or deny any actual taxpayer price tag for months! A public press conference a whole week and a half before a legislative deadline isn’t the right time to ask when the governor will stop ducking questions, show some decorum!

But amid all the stalling, Hochul did let slip one potentially significant tidbit about her Bills spending plans during a Friday visit to Buffalo:

“There are two sources,” Hochul said. “Yes, it could be in the budget. Yes, there’s also economic development money on the table so we’ll be focusing on the funding.”

Say what, now? For months, Hochul has vowed that the state’s money toward a Bills stadium would be part of the state budget, which has to be approved by April 1. But throwing out the option of also using “economic development money” leaves open the possibility of sending additional money to the Bills owners — conceivably without going through the legislature at all.

If that seems like a lot of maybes, that’s where we are with economic development funding, which is a famously murky area. The state has its own economic development arm, the Empire State Development corporation, which helped fund and build the Brooklyn Nets arena and the New York Islanders arena, among other things; it also has numerous local Industrial Development Authorities that can fund projects on the county level. As discussed here a couple of months ago, both have the ability to provide tax breaks or even straight cash grants without being voted on by state legislators.

That doesn’t quite mean that they’re an unlimited slush fund for Hochul, though. Tax breaks are limited to taxes actually being paid, and there’s no way a Bills stadium could be rebated $1 billion on taxes owed. And IDAs have limited cash reserves — the Erie County IDA, for example, only keeps about $25 million in cash on hand — so there would need to be some sort of legislative move to redirect state money to a Bills project, one would think.

Still, that “one would think” is doing a lot of work there, so it’s hard to be totally confident that Hochul doesn’t have some sort of legislative end run up her sleeve, at least for a chunk of the money. But truly, what other choice does she have? Should she, say, do a comprehensive study of the economic benefits of a new Bills stadium to the state, and limit state funding to what taxpayers would actually get for their dollars? Sure, that’s what the Citizens Budget Commission proposed yesterday, but really, is this the right time to be saying that? Tune back in at 5:59 pm on March 31, and all — except for any secret gubernatorial slush funds, obviously — will be revealed.