BUFFALO, N.Y. -- With payments about three months overdue and the threat of layoffs looming at Buffalo's RiverBend construction site, the Office of the State Comptroller on Tuesday afternoon wired roughly $33 million dollars to contractor LPCiminelli.

"Happy we avoided that shutdown but we've got to get a little bit better at this," said Assemblyman Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo.

If the scene sounds familiar, it is. In February, about 200 construction workers were temporarily laid off because the state was late on payments.

"It's a bit concerning that this is the third time on this project that the comptroller had to wire emergency money to this," Ryan said.

The state had attributed the previous layoffs to a cash-flow issue and appeared to address it in May when the Public Authorities Control Board approved $485.5 million in spending for the governor's Buffalo Billion initiative, but a spokesperson for the comptroller said when they received a request for $154 million in payments for the RiverBend project last Wednesday, there were a lot of unanswered questions.

"Certainly we're concerned and I think everyone's concerned," state Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, said. "We have to make sure that folks are paid appropriately and in a timely fashion and that the work continues."

The comptroller's office said it authorized enough money to avoid layoffs but is still waiting for some answers from Empire State Development.

"What they did is they peeled off money from their big request, enough to pay vendors and contractors for past-due payments, so we peeled about twenty percent of it off," Ryan said.

The governor has already said an independent investigator is reviewing all decisions related to Buffalo Billion contracts. Ryan said because of the federal probe into the initiative, the legislature has asked the comptroller to take a closer look too.

"We need to achieve the balance between doing the due diligence on one hand but keeping the project going forward with the other hand. I don't think we're in balance yet, because we came very close to the wire again," Ryan said.

LPCiminelli said April's invoice is due by the end of next week.