No record kept of Hochul talks with NFL boss
Calls were made as new Bills’ stadium was negotiated
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office kept no records documenting her conversations in late December with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell as her administration was negotiating a deal to publicly subsidize a new stadium for the privately owned Buffalo Bills.
The lack of notes or other records documenting the governor’s two conversations with the commissioner six months ago was confirmed when the executive chamber said they had no documentation of those calls in response to a Freedom of Information Law request filed by the Times Union.
The governor’s conversations with the NFL’S top official came ahead of a deal announced in late March for the state to heavily subsidize the new stadium for Hochul’s hometown Buffalo Bills, which is expected to cost taxpayers at least $1 billion over the course of a 30-year lease.
On Dec. 27, Hochul held a 2 p.m. phone call with Goodell, along with her director of state operations, Kathryn Garcia, and budget director, Robert Mujica. The meeting was disclosed in a scheduled released by the administration months later. It took place a few hours after Hochul was on a call with President Joe Biden to discuss a record-surge of coronavirus cases involving the omicron variant.
A few days later, Hochul held a one-on-one call with Goodell, according to her schedule.
The details of the calls, which the Times Union requested, were not disclosed because the executive chamber said no notes or other written records were kept of the calls. It’s unclear whether any recordings of the conversations were made.
A complete picture of how the deal was negotiated remains clouded because of the private conversations that were involved. (Hochul has pledged her administration would be the most transparent in state history.)
The upfront cost of the stadium is $600 million from the state and $250 million from Erie County. An additional $281 million is being allocated for repairs, maintenance and improvements over the 30-year lease for a stadium that the state will own.
Hochul announced the state came to an agreement on the deal with the owners of the Bills, Terry and Kim Pegula, and the NFL in a statement that was released from her office just days before the state budget was adopted. Lawmakers, many who complained they were caught off guard by the deal, still needed to agree to the terms of the deal and include the money in the budget, which was done.
The announcement came as lawmakers were jockeying for their respective causes to be funded in the final weeks of budget negotiations. It particularly led to outrage from some Republicans and multiple progressive Democrats, who said the governor was using the deal as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations.
An announcement to spend the money on the Bills prior to the Legislature agreeing to it —
and amid contentious negotiations on Hochul’s proposed changes to the state’s bail laws — was viewed as a “distraction in order to get us off the baseline” and an attempt to “hold the state budget hostage,” Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, D-brooklyn, said at the time. Walker was the top Democrat defending the state’s bail laws that had been amended in 2019 but retooled this year to meet concerns raised by prosecutors and other law enforcement stakeholders.
The announcement of the agreement also came with fraught timing for the Seneca Nation. Hochul said she planned for the state to use $418 million of a $564 million payment from the Seneca Nation to offset the costs of building a new stadium.
The payment was announced a day after the Seneca Nation Council directed the transfer of funds to resolve their ongoing gaming compact dispute with New York, which centers on its obligation to pay casino revenue-sharing money to the state.
The council vote was taken after bank accounts for the nation were frozen because of a subpoena issued by the state.
The nation characterize the move as “hostile and shameless greed.” The Hochul administration characterized it as a “good faith” negotiation, in which the governor sought to resolve “amicably since the beginning of her administration.”