BUFFALO, N.Y. — As with her State of the State address, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's executive budget presentation made no mention of funding for a new Buffalo Bills stadium.
Budget Director Robert Mujica afterward confirmed at this point the stadium in not part of the 2022 budget.
"There hasn't been any determination because we don't have a dollar number of what the contribution would be yet," Mujica said. "Those talks are ongoing. There's not an appropriation for that."
Gov. Hochul previously said she's confident the state, Erie County and the Bills could get a deal done by the end of March, before the Legislature is required to approve a budget. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz deferred when asked directly if he was confident it would be on time for the budget.
"I'm confident the Bills will beat the Chiefs, that's about all I'm going to add with regards to the negotiations. As I said, it's a complicated transaction and it's better to get it right than to just say we're going to get it done by an arbitrary timeline," he said.
As Poloncarz pointed out, the Bills remain in the playoffs and for the past two weekends, New Yorkers could legally place mobile bets on the team. According to the budget book, they wagered more than $150 million on the Bills and others in just the first weekend.
State Senate Gaming Chair Joe Addabbo said it's too early to say how sustainable those revenues are, but it's a good start.
"In the two-year duration that we did sports betting in New York that you had to do it in person, we made $3.7 million and we did that number that we did in two years, we did that number just in that initial weekend," Addabbo said.
And in other gambling news, the state is expediting the bid process for three remaining casino licenses.
"That's a perfect starting point for us to delve into this issue even further in terms of the thousands of jobs in construction and then another thousand post-construction, the educational funds and the revenue that activating these downstate licenses would occur," Addabbo said.