Frustrated by the secrecy and lack of information surrounding negotiations for a new Buffalo Bills stadium, Erie County legislators are demanding more transparency and regular updates from the county administration.
The Legislature's unanimous resolution requires the county administration provide them regular updates about the status of negotiations concerning the construction of a new Bills stadium. It also requires County Executive Mark Poloncarz to release any Bills stadium study that may have been provided to him or the county's negotiating agents.
Members of the Poloncarz administration and officials from Pegula Sports and Entertainment have repeatedly denied that any government officials have been given the study, which was privately paid for by the team ownership. Gov. Kathy Hochul has said the state will separately release the findings of its own stadium study, which will take a couple of months to complete.
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On Twitter Thursday afternoon, Poloncarz reiterated the point.
"It's impossible to turn over something we don't have," he wrote. "As we have told the legislature and others before, the Pegulas' stadium study is property of the team. It has not been turned over to the county or state. That's why NYS is performing a separate study for our own analysis."
"I think about this constantly. I've talked to people behind the scenes just to gather information. But we'll make the right decision for the people of Western New York," Hochul said.
Paul Wolf, the president of the New York Coalition for Open Government, had challenged legislators last week to demand more information about what's happening with the stadium lease. Thursday's resolution is a good step forward, he said.
"I’m glad to see there’s unanimous support for transparency and releasing any studies to the public," he said.
Legislature Chairwoman April Baskin said she has been disappointed by the lack of information from the county administration about what is occurring with negotiations, leaving legislators to figure out what's going on by following media reports.
"To date, there has been no update or communication with the Legislature of Erie County as to how those negotiations are going," she said. "And to be even more frank, to understand that the new stadium was even possibly coming to Erie County has never been formally told to me."
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Minority Leader Joseph Lorigo and others said the Legislature should not be put in the same situation it was 10 years ago, when lawmakers were handed the negotiated lease agreement and asked to approve it right away and commit millions in taxpayer dollars after having been sidelined in the negotiating process.
Poloncarz has repeatedly stated that negotiations would remain confidential. However, information about the proposal for a $1.4 billion, 60,000-seat stadium in Orchard Park has since been widely reported. And while the Republican-supported minority caucus initiated Thursday's resolution demanding more transparency, legislators on both sides have voiced disapproval about being left in the dark.
They were more divided Thursday, and debated at length how much transparency they should demand; how much input the Legislature should have on negotiations; and whether they are entitled to sit in on negotiations.
"We're going to be tasked with voting on something that affects every single resident that we all represent," Lorigo said, "and that's going to affect them for years, if not decades. We should have representatives in the room and we should receive periodic updates about what's going on."
Democratic legislators Kevin Hardwick and John Gilmour were most critical of the notion that any legislators should get to sit in on negotiations.
"That's not our role," Gilmour said.
Hardwick said that getting updates from the county administration would provide legislators more of an opportunity to have discussions about what the Legislature would consider acceptable in a final stadium lease agreement.
"I think it really does provide for effective transparency, and still the ability to reach an agreement with the Buffalo Bills that everybody can live with," Hardwick said.
In regards to the release of the private stadium study, the Democratic majority said it didn't believe the county executive was lying about not having a copy of the study.
Legislator Howard Johnson said that he is aware that Ron Raccuia, executive vice president of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, has shared some general information about the study with elected leaders in the state delegation, as well as with board members of Buffalo Place, a nonprofit group that oversees the economic growth of the downtown corridor.
But Johnson, who listened to Raccuia's presentation to the Buffalo Place board on Wednesday, said most of what Raccuia shared has already been publicly reported by the media. He also said Raccuia told the board that no government entity had a copy of the study.
The county administration had expected that both public and private money would be spent on a new stadium study, and officials were initially surprised that team owners Kim and Terry Pegula chose to pay for the study on their own and keep the findings confidential. However, Poloncarz acknowledged that as a private business, Pegula Sports and Entertainment is not obligated to share.
Lorigo expressed skepticism that Poloncarz had no access to the study findings.
"This is something that they're using to negotiate for hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, and the county executive is our lead negotiator representing taxpayers," Lorigo said. "If he's not looking at all the documents available to him, shame on him."
