Financial Struggles In Buffalo: What’s The Budget Deficit?

New York's second-largest city has been dealing with some pretty serious financial issues over the last couple of years. It was just over a year ago when city officials used a large chunk of the federal COVID-19 stimulus funds to plug some holes in the city's bank account. Now with those funds gone, there are more issues that need to be solved.

Not only is Buffalo dealing with a reduction in its credit score, but it has raised fees in all sorts of places to try to make up the shortfall.

While there are tons of proposals to increase revenue, until those materialize, the city still has to find millions of dollars in funds in order to be able to pay all of its bills this year. Unfortunately, there is some major disagreement on how much money is needed to pay those bills.

Government Officials Can't Agree On How Much Buffalo's Budget Deficit Is

Over the months, there has been a major dispute between the Mayor's office, the Buffalo Common Council, and the City Comptroller about the city's budget and exactly how short the government will be when the end of the fiscal year comes in June. While there is no dispute that there is a deficit, the is a big dispute on how big the deficit is.

Now, thanks to a quarterly financial report that was issued by the Comptroller this week, the debate on the deficit figures is back in the news again, and the potential dollar amount is staggering.

According to the First Quarter Gap Report issued by City Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams, the city's projected deficit is at least $42.8 million and could be as much as $80.3 million for this year alone.

Several Buffalo Common Council Members, who reviewed the Gap Report during the city's first council meeting of the year, took issue with the figures, with South District Council Member Scanlon calling it wildly irresponsible to put these numbers out for the public.

Ed Nice Jackson

Current Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan has said that New York State may be willing to help the city shore up its finances in the short term, and Governor Kathy Hochul said that this is something that is on the table. We're going to have to wait and see if things get better or worse in Buffalo.