It’s the question befuddling Buffalo’s government: how big is the city’s projected budget deficit for the end of this fiscal year?
The answer depends on which branch of city government you ask.
The former administration, led by Christopher Scanlon, reported in November the deficit will be in the region of $2.3 million. But Buffalo Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams disagrees.
In a report released this week the city's chief auditor said the deficit will be closer to $40 million and could grow to approximately $80 million if the Seneca casino compact revenue and sale of land and buildings cash does not come in as predicted.
Scanlon was back in Buffalo Common Council chambers Tuesday, re-taking his position as South District representative for the first time since leaving the executive office as acting mayor on Dec. 31. He called the comptroller's report "wildly irresponsible."
"The days of the comptroller and her staff just throwing out random numbers has to come to an end," Scanlon said. "It's wildly irresponsible to put these numbers out for the public and to scare the public when it's not an accurate portrayal of what the actual financial situation is."
Buffalo Common Council Finance Committee Chair Mitch Nowakowski agreed, and took objection to the fact the comptroller had given the $80 million projection based on the hypothetical scenario that $11 million in Seneca casino compact money is not collected by the city "when we know [it has] always come in to city coffers," he said.
Visibly frustrated, Nowakowski added the council aims to question the comptroller on the math in the Finance Committee meeting next week.
"The taxpayers don't deserve to wake up in the morning and see on the news: 'It could be 40, it could be 80, it could be red, it could be blue, it could be raining cats and dogs.' Come on," he said.
However, the City of Buffalo's own budget documents show projected Seneca casino compact money has not always come in when due in recent years.
The city was unable to collect compact money between FY2017-2018 and FY2020-2021 according to city budget documents. That's because the Seneca Nation withheld payments to New York State between 2017 to 2022 after a dispute over the compact agreement.
The city eventually received a backdated injection of Seneca compact money in FY2021-2022 after the courts ordered the Seneca Nation to resume payments to the state and release the withheld revenue. The administration of Gov. Kathy Hochul then froze the bank accounts of the Seneca Nation, leading to about $565 million in funds going to the state.
Though the city has received compact payments through the state each fiscal year since, it is not always the budgeted amount. For example, archived budget documents show the city planned to receive $11 million in compact cash in FY2023-2024 but only around $6.8 million came in.
Buffalo's new mayor Sean Ryan said working out the city's true budget deficit is "job one," the night he was elected. And on the campaign trail he repeatedly said he plans to bring in state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to do just that.
In the meantime, it's down to the Buffalo Common Council to hash out the facts in the upcoming Finance Committee meeting.
"It's very complicated, but somewhere in the middle is the truth and we're going to figure it out what that is," said Council Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope. "I'll be digging pretty deeply into this before Tuesday, and we'll be asking some pretty hard questions."
