With just over two weeks to go before the state budget deadline, there’s still no word from Gov. Kathy Hochul on how much she’s going to expect state taxpayers to kick in toward a new $1.4 billion Buffalo Bills stadium, because a savvy governor creates a false sense of urgency. But we do know one thing: Whatever the number is, potentially add another quarter-billion dollars for new and renovated minor-league baseball stadiums.
According to a report by the Utica Observer-Dispatch, the mayors of 11 Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League cities — Amsterdam (home of the Mohawks), Auburn (the Doubledays), Boonville (the Adirondack Trail Blazers), Elmira (the Pioneers), Glens Falls (the Dragons), Jamestown (the, uh, Tarp Skunks, that is seriously their name), Niagara Falls (the Power, they weren’t even trying compared to the Tarp Skunks), Newark (the Pilots), Oneonta (the Outlaws), Little Falls (the Mohawk Valley DiamondDawgs), and Saugerties (the Stallions) — as well as the executive of Oneida County and the Batavia (the Muckdogs) city council president, have formed the “Buffalo Bills Equity Investment Group,” which is an impressively Orwellian name for a group whose sole goal is to say “anything state taxpayers give to the Bills, hold over a slice to give to our minor-league baseball teams”:
“From being abandoned by Major League Baseball to being excluded from COVID-19 assistance, municipally-owned minor league baseball stadiums have faced a host of unforeseen challenges in recent years,” [Oneida County Executive Anthony] Picente said in a statement. “With the Bills poised to reap close to a billion dollars in state funding, we are simply seeking some level of equity in capital funding.”
Equity! That’s what it is! Just a bunch of small-town elected officials trying to insure that their baseball team owners aren’t short-changed by, uh, systemic biases against small-town baseball team owners in a league set up to replace paid minor-league player jobs with unpaid college summer internships.
Now, all that this gang of (counts) 13 has actually done is sent a letter to Hochul asking for their cut of the boodle, so it’s possible they will get the cold shoulder. Given that Hochul’s re-election campaign strategy appears to be “boodle for everyone!”, however, it’s also very possible it won’t, even if the minor-league money doesn’t flow immediately: Only the state money for the Bills needs to be approved by April 1, after all, with county subsidies likely to take several months more, which means there’s plenty of time to add in some baseball side deals along the way.
Or, it’s possible that this is just a quixotic move by some local pols that got the attention of the local paper’s politics reporter. The Buffalo News, for example, hasn’t touched this story yet, and you’d think there’s no reason they would be ignoring a new angle on a story they’ve covered to death — unless, okay, the News’ publisher serving on a panel of business executives to advise the Bills owners on how to best land funding for a stadium sounds like it could be the thing that might influence the newspaper’s coverage, but I’m sure he’s a mild-mannered guy who would never let the opinions he holds as the head of a publishing company influence the work of the people whose checks he signs.