Erie County’s Financial Fumble: The Buffalo Bills Stadium Bonds
Exciting news for Erie County: the circus is in town! The less exciting news is they’ve taken over the County government and are asking taxpayers to give them another $125 million for the Buffalo Bills’ new stadium. The county has already paid $125 million in taxpayer dollars, but they need more and plan to get it by selling $5000 minimum “Bills Bonds” to these same taxpayers and “investors.” For one day only, on Sept. 23rd giving $5000 to the stadium construction project will get you an undisclosed interest rate up to 5%, meaning in 25-30 years “investors” will have a massive payout of $5250. Hopefully, you were sitting down for that; we’ve finally discovered the infinite money glitch. Thank you, Mr. Poloncarz - you are one of the minds of all time.
The fact that there even is a minimum amount shows the financial straits this project has very predictably found itself in. This isn’t a grassroots attempt to build a sense of community, it’s a desperate attempt to have taxpayers cover for the mistakes of the county. From the beginning this new stadium was being built under false pretenses. By calling it a private project and still attaching a prevailing wage (PW) mandate and project labor agreements (PLA), the project was doomed to be completed late (if at all) and over budget.
Three months after construction began on their new stadium, the Buffalo Bills are already facing $300 million in cost overruns. There are so many other recent examples of this exact same thing happening across the state. Look no further than their close neighbor Monroe County, which had only one bidder for the project that came for the Seneca Park Zoo renovations for $52 million over the original estimate.
The issue isn’t that Erie County didn’t have access to all of the same information and data that we have. They don’t care about the cost to their constituents, the most important thing to them is keeping the donations coming.
Selling $5000 minimum bonds to cover the financial gaps that your administration created is a bizarre new low. There is a very easy solution that could be implemented tomorrow and cost Erie County taxpayers $0 more dollars; open up the project to all qualified businesses and allow for a fair, open bidding process. The Bills’ Stadium project being this expensive isn’t a necessity, it’s a deliberate choice being made by the county at everyone else’s expense.