WASHINGTON – The departing Democrat-led Congress stuffed metro Buffalo's stocking with more than $47.5 million in aid just before Christmas, passing a $1.7 trillion bill to fund the federal government through Sept. 30 and to give local lawmakers nationwide the projects they wanted, which range locally from $10 million to continue repairs to the Bird Island Pier to $165,000 for improvements to the Elma Senior Center.
Those sorts of pork-barrel projects were banned for years, only to make a roaring comeback in the current Democratic Congress. And in the recently passed spending bill, Erie and Niagara counties took home more than double the amount of earmarked federal aid than they received the year before.
Some of the money – like the $1 million set to synchronize traffic lights on Bailey Avenue in Buffalo – will go to projects Western New Yorkers will see. Other grants – like $250,000 in hydrogen research funding at the University at Buffalo – will be hidden away in research labs. Overall, the list of big-money projects consists largely of infrastructure improvements.
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Both House members who represented the Buffalo metro area at the time of the bill's passage, Democratic Rep. Brian Higgins and Republican Rep. Chris Jacobs, supported the measure to fund the government.
"This is what Congress does," said Higgins, who has long angled to bring home as much federal money as possible and who will continue to serve in the new Congress that took office Tuesday. "I wish it were a couple hundred million" for Buffalo in the new bill, he added.
Jacobs was one of only nine House Republicans to back the spending bill, but he didn't sound too thrilled about it.
"This is not the way we should run things: a 4,000-page document that comes to us at the last minute," said Jacobs, who retired from Congress at the end of the year and whose district was radically redrawn due to congressional reapportionment. "Certainly there's going to be things in there that I'm not thrilled about, but I believe we have an obligation to keep government running."
Higgins brought home about $24.7 million in aid for his Buffalo-based district, while Jacobs won nearly $14 million for his district, which sprawled from the Buffalo suburbs to Rochester's. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, both New York Democrats, claimed credit for nearly $14 million for Western New York, too, including funding for some projects in the Southern Tier.
"I will always fight to bring home federal dollars to give Western New York the support it needs," Schumer said.
"This is a critical investment that will help revitalize Western New York," Gillibrand added.
Most Republicans, though, opposed the measure, known in congressional parlance as an omnibus spending bill.
"The omnibus, with its outrageous and frankly dangerous spending levels, will hurt the health of our nation today and in the future," said Rep. Joe Sempolinski, who, like Jacobs, has left Congress but who previously represented a sprawling district covering much of the Southern Tier and the Finger Lakes region. "American taxpayers deserve better than this fiscally irresponsible bill, thousands of pages long, released in the dead of night and rammed through against a holiday deadline. This is Washington politics at its worst.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican who now represents a newly redrawn district stretching from Western New York to Watertown, took to Twitter to dismiss the bill as "the Democrats' socialist spending spree."
Like Tenney, Rep. Elise Stefanik, who represents the North Country, attacked the bill for doing nothing about inflation and the influx of undocumented immigrants at the southern border.
"Instead of addressing these crises, lame-duck Democrats doubled down on their radical wish list that spends nearly two trillion taxpayer dollars to expand their radical agenda," she said.
Here's a list of the largest Buffalo-area projects included in the spending bill:
• $10 million to continue rebuilding the Bird Island Pier, which was severely damaged in an October 2019 storm.
• $7.5 million to repair the USS The Sullivans, a retired ship at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park that started sinking in April.
• $2.8 million to plan and design a new joint operations facility at the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station.
• $2.4 million for a 40-bed Substance Use Disorder Treatment Center at Catholic Health's St. Joseph Campus in Cheektowaga.
• $2 million to expand FeedMore WNY's main facility to more than double its current capacity.
• $2 million to the University at Buffalo develop and test a self-driving shuttle to improve transportation services at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
• $2 million for advanced radiation technology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
• $2 million to People Inc. for telehealth services for seniors and individuals with disabilities.
• $2 million for a combined wastewater treatment plan in the Town of Concord.
• $1.5 million to preserve First Presbyterian Church on Symphony Circle in Buffalo.
• $1.4 million for the Academic Innovation Hub at Niagara University.
• $1 million to synchronize traffic lights and improve traffic flow on Bailey Avenue in Buffalo.
• $1 million for Launch NY to aid startup businesses in Erie and Niagara counties.
• $1 million to build the Hispanic Heritage Cultural Institute of Western New York.
• $933,000 for a University at Buffalo mobile health clinic to operate in the Seneca-Babcock neighborhood.
• $900,000 for a new police communications tower in Amherst.
• $900,000 to realign and extend a taxiway at Niagara Falls International Airport.
• $750,000 for an addition to the conservatory at the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens.
• $750,000 for Niagara University to establish science labs and classrooms at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
• $750,000 to improve the Grand Island Senior Center.
Other major projects elsewhere in Western New York include:
• $2.5 million for a new public safety facility in Batavia.
• $2 million for a new Orleans County Emergency Management and Operations Center.
• $2 million for a water tank in Genesee County.
• $1.5 million for equipment at the Noyes Health facility in Geneseo.
And that might be just part of the funding headed to Western New York.
On Tuesday, Schumer announced that the bill creates a new Great Lakes Authority that will aim to pump $33 million in grants to states, local governments, Native American tribes and nonprofit organizations. The grants will be used for economic development and infrastructure projects.
“Investing in the upstate communities of the Great Lakes is investing in the future of America, and I am proud to have helped create this new Great Lakes Authority so that new jobs can flow across the region," Schumer said.
