Buffalo’s Billion Dollar Bill

Football and politics should be as dispersed as oil and water. Yet, we have the spectacle of an unelected governor of the great state of New York hijacking tax-paying citizens to subsidize a new stadium in her hometown of Buffalo, to the tune of $850 million. $600 million from New York State and $250 million from Erie County, 60 percent of the total $1.4 billion cost. Hundreds of millions more are committed to maintenance throughout a 30-year lease, expected to leave taxpayers on the hook for $1.1 billion. Moreover, her husband is general counsel and senior vice president of Delaware North, the company that operates concessions at the Bills stadium. This tone-deaf graft is borderline criminal and should disqualify her from election to the highest office in one of the nation’s most significant states. Without the political capital of having won election to office, the audacity of asking New Yorkers to fund an extravagance that most residents will never benefit from, for a franchise of the richest professional sport in America, owned by one-percenters and their cohort, is unconscionable. Hochul personifies political corruption while inflicting severe damage to the Democratic Party. The Bills’ threat move to Austin, Texas, if they didn’t get their subsidized stadium was, in all likelihood, an empty gesture and cloud cover for Hochul who can claim she saved the team for Western New York. The fact that the ultra-wealthy owners of the franchise could quickly round up funding from a consortium of business interests in Buffalo in a single afternoon makes her case particularly egregious. Hochul’s gift to the privileged class, who in turn fund her campaign war chest on the backs of taxpayers is obscene, outrageous, and indefensible. Former governor Andrew Cuomo may have been a crass, sleazebag, arrogant, self-aggrandizing, power-drunk, handsy, horndog prick. But his transgressions pale compared to Hochul’s shameless abuse of power, exercised as an unelected benchwarmer.