Several of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decisions touching on her hometown Buffalo area serve the interests of Delaware North, her husband’s employer.
As a senior vice president and counsel at DN, Bill Hochul draws over $650,000 a year, and of course could score a nice retirement package after his wife leaves office.
Each spouse has declared a recusal from the other’s business but with no enforcement mechanism in sight.
And the multibillion-dollar gaming, hotels and concessions company keeps doing well off the gov’s decisions, reports The New York Times.
Most recently, a late-appearing provision in the new state budget restructures the public-private board overseeing the Batavia Downs hotel and casino, which Delaware North has been looking to acquire.
Last year, Hochul slapped Seneca Nation, whose gambling enterprises compete directly with DN’s, by freezing tribal assets to force it to hand over $564 million in casino payments the state said it owed.
Hochul then used $418 million of the money to subsidize construction of a new Buffalo Bills stadium, even as DN was seeking to renew its Bills concessions contract.
(It’s now out of the running, though the company could get something else of value down the line.)
And now Team Hochul is negotiating a new gaming compact with the Senecas for the state’s share of gambling receipts, as well as defining the Nation’s exclusivity territory in the Buffalo area — which, again, is Delaware North’s area, too.
Pay-to-play allegations have surrounded Gov. Hochul’s handling of state deals for COVID test kits, Medicaid transportation contracts, $600 million in public money for that new Buffalo Bills stadium and the efforts to redevelop Penn Station and its environs.
The only way the gov could start to clear the air on the hubby front is to verifiably release all communications involving herself, her staff, Delaware North and probably the Bills and the Senecas too.
Taxpayers have every right to demand proof the gov isn’t helping out her husband.
Kathy Hochul vowed to be more transparent than her disgraced predecessor, but “more straightforward than Andrew Cuomo” is a laughably low bar.
She can and should do a lot better.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
