BUFFALO, N.Y. — After the gaming compact between New York State and the Seneca Nation expired in December 2023, quarterly revenue payments have not been made to the state by the Senecas.
According to the terms of the recently expired compact, New York State state receives 25% of the "net drop" for slot machines. Since the expiration of the compact, the Seneca Nation has deposited those revenues into an escrow account.
Since June of 2023, the negotiations between the Seneca Nation and the state have gone back and forth, and no deal has been reached. At the end of 2023, the state and Seneca Nation agreed to extend the conditions of the existing compact while a new deal is negotiated.
As such, Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Salamanca — three cities that host a Seneca casino — have not received their revenues.
New York State, however, is stepping in and advancing the host cities their estimated casino revenue.
Gov. Kathy Hochul's office has confirmed that the state will be cutting checks to the three cities by the end of October.
How much each city will receive is unknown right now.
This comes as several Buffalo lawmakers have expressed concerns that the city's finances are in trouble as Mayor Byron Brown plans to step down from his 19-year tenure as the city's chief executive.
"Do we want the money? Yes, the City of Buffalo wants the money," Ellicott District Councilmember Leah Halton-Pope said. "It's critically important, and getting that negotiation worked out is something we've been working on for a while."
According to the Buffalo Control Board, the city is facing a $10 million to $15 million budget gap next year. Lawmakers, however, have floated the notion that the gap could be anywhere between $30 million to $50 million because of certain revenue streams not being guaranteed.
The casino revenue is one of those streams that the City of Buffalo accounts for each year, but throughout the time of the compact hasn't always been delivered — mainly because of disputes between the state and Seneca Nation.
A previous compact dispute was resolved on March 28, 2022, when the Seneca Nation released five years of payments to New York State—that was after New York State froze the bank accounts of the Seneca Nation on March 25.
The freezing of assets by NYS essentially forced the Seneca Nation to release $564 million to the state.
The same day the Seneca Nation released the money to New York State, Governor Hochul announced that $418 million of the Seneca Nation payments would be used for the new Bills Stadium.
The remaining $146 million was split between the host cities. Buffalo received a little more than $40 million.
A spokesperson for Governor Hochul said the money calculated was between the time of Dec. 10 and June 30.