If Gov. Cuomo had a nickel for every taxpayer dollar handed out to a private business over his time in office, he’d never need to fund-raise.
Now he looks ready to bless another handout. This time, it’s for a brand-new stadium for the Buffalo Bills.
Wait! you say. Isn’t the Bills’ Ralph Wilson Stadium already getting $94 million in public subsidies for current renovation work? And you would be right.
But it seems that once you tap Albany for money, it’s never enough. The emphasis now is on a new stadium that could easily cost as much as $1 billion — with much of the price being paid by taxpayers.
The governor is trying to have it both ways.
“I agree that the less government money, the better,” Cuomo said recently about investing in any project to renovate or replace the stadium. But he went on to say that if taxpayer dollars were “essential,” he’d supply them. And he has already formed a working group to study the idea.
It’s madness. The Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon notes that much of the aid going to the existing renovations comes from borrowed money, which means taxpayers could easily still be paying off the renovations for Ralph Wilson Stadium even as they are paying for the new one. McMahon rightly points to a comprehensive 2008 survey of economists that shows they are highly dubious about the worth of taxpayers underwriting sports stadiums.
Of course, the Bills aren’t the only ones on the dole. Each year, New York state takes nearly $2 billion from taxpayers to hand out to select businesses — including $420 million just to film companies.
Whether the effect is a net boost for the economy is debatable. What is undeniable is that these subsidies tend to favor industries like sports and film over, say, the non-glam enterprises run by men and women whose sweat and investment and risk-taking create many of the jobs in our state.
Let the Bills pay for their own stadium, and let New York taxpayers off the hook.