Gov. Kathy Hochul is eager to keep the football team from leaving town.
Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll look at how far New York State might go to help build a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. We’ll also look at a play that’s coming to Off Broadway and tells the story of a Dreamer. The Buffalo Bills have passionate fans like the actress Christine Baranski and the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, who taped a segment from his “Situation Room” studio about his memories of the team, including the four Super Bowls that they played in during the 1990s — “which, unfortunately, we lost.” Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Bills fan, has done more than merely mention the Bills in speeches and post photos while watching Bills games. Perhaps her most consequential support of the team has unfolded in back-room talks with its owners. The subject: building a $1.4 billion stadium. The negotiations reflect Hochul’s desire to keep the team from moving, especially during an election year. And helping with the stadium is a possibility right now because of the state’s unusually bright financial picture. But my colleagues Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Ken Belson write that providing a substantial subsidy for a sports team is all but certain to prompt pushback from critics. And with the state budget due next week, Hochul may need to explain the taxpayer benefits, given the long history of publicly underwritten arenas that have had relatively little economic impact. The stadium could be financed with as much as $1 billion — a combination of money from the state and Erie County, of which Buffalo is the county seat, according to two people familiar with the structure of the proposed deal, which has not been finalized. The rest of the money, they said, would come from a loan from the N.F.L. and money from the team owners. With seats for roughly 60,000 fans, the proposed stadium would hold fewer people than Highmark, the Bills’ current home. But it would have more luxury club seating, which brings in more revenue than regular seats. Would the Bills leave Buffalo if another city offered to spend more on a new stadium? The editorial board of Syracuse’s main news outlet recently described any threat that the team would leave as a bluff, declaring that “taxpayers should not be bullied into bailing out the team’s uber-rich owner and the uber-uber-uber-rich National Football League.” Terry Pegula, who owns the team along with his wife, Kim, made his fortune through fracking and also owns the Buffalo Sabres of the N.H.L. He has a net worth of $5.8 billion, according to Forbes. Hochul has yet to present a potential stadium deal to state lawmakers, who must approve it. Rumors about stadium financing have been swirling in Albany, adding even more friction to already tense negotiations over other issues in the state budget, including new proposed funding for child care programs.
