NY officials: At least Bills’ record $1B subsidy isn’t even higher, why won’t anyone credit us with that, huh?

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz got approval for their $1 billion in public funding for a new Buffalo Bills stadium, but still people are saying how they gave in to extortion by billionaires. So the duo took to the hustings this week to defend the deal and themselves, mostly by saying that no matter how record-breaking the subsidy was, it could have been even worse:

“My preference was Buffalo but as I’ve said before you never get everything you want in a negotiation. We didn’t,” Poloncarz wrote. “The Pegulas didn’t (their original ask for was NYS and County to build a stadium in OP w/no team contribution). It’s a compromise. The team stays. That’s a win.”

That’s right: Poloncarz says that Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula really wanted to pay nothing toward a new stadium, whereas under his and the governor’s deal, they have to pay $550 million, of which $150 million is covered by forgivable grants from the NFL, $160 million will be reimbursed by future operating and maintenance subsidies, and the sale of naming rights by the team on a publicly owned building should cover at least a couple hundred million more, leaving the Pegulas to pay … you know what, it’s not about the money, really, it’s about the spirit of compromise, isn’t it?

Hochul, meanwhile, defended herself against accusations that she negotiated poorly because she had a gun to her head by saying that she didn’t have any choice, as the Pegulas had a gun to her head:

“They did have options to leave,” Hochul said during an appearance on WNYC. “That’s hanging over New Yorkers — Western New Yorkers in particular. The decision was made to get the best deal we could for taxpayers.”…

“I was aware that they were being reached out to by other cities that have lost teams before. That is real,” Hochul replied. “Their stadium was starting to crumble, something had to happen. And if there wasn’t a decision done soon, they had, definitely, other options.”…

“My whole life there was talk of them going to Toronto … Buffalo is a very small market. It is quite extraordinary that they have a team at all,” she said. “Because there’s a lot more money to be had in those larger cities like San Diego and others who would love to have a team. So, that’s a reality most people probably aren’t familiar with.”

There’s a lot going on there, from the suggestion that the current Bills stadium would have been too expensive to repair (actual repair price: somewhere between $123 million and $459 million, depending on which engineer you choose to believe) to the assertion that the Bills were “being reached out to” by cities like, well, she’s not going to name other cities that actually reached out, but Toronto is a city, and San Diego is a city, so what choice did she have, really?

That the two main elected advocates for the public in stadium talks are busy making talking points for the Bills raking in a record amount of public cash — their old stadium sucks, Buffalo is a sad little town, we should be glad they agreed to pay anything at all — just underscores the degree to which Hochul and Poloncarz really were negotiating against themselves here, without even stopping to see what if anything other cities were offering. (San Diego voters, for the record, just rejected a $1.15 billion stadium deal, because California, unlike New York, lets residents actually vote on such things.) But politicians gonna politish, so we can expect to hear more of this, especially with Hochul facing a June gubernatorial primary in which, uh, one guy running more than 40 points behind her said she didn’t negotiate a great deal. Democracy, y’all.