Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is asking Erie County legislators of the community benefits agreement (CBA) committee for the new Bills stadium deal to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
During a Erie County Legislative session on Thursday, Acting Erie County Attorney and member of the CBA committee Jeremy Toth sat before the legislators to answer an intense line of questioning regarding the NDA.
"A nondisclosure agreement, quite frankly, is pretty typical and it was agreed by the County Executive and Franklin Jones that that was the best way to go forward," said Toth.
Although it is not legally required of the legislators to sign the agreement, Erie County Legislator April Baskin, who has been a loud advocate for a CBA as part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) portion of the stadium deal, said she will sign it so that this long delayed process of trying to convene to draft a CBA, will go forward, hopefully before the deadline of September 1st.
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"When first presented with the non-disclosure agreement affiliated with the community benefits agreement, I immediately thought about how I'm going to be able to communicate with my colleagues in the legislature. It was important for me before even entertaining signing an agreement that the members of this body who represent the constituency in which we're fighting for to have benefits out of the new stadium do understand that there was going to be a lot of things that I would not be able to talk to them about and the same request had been made of two other legislators, it seems today that we have made that clear," said Baskin.
"I intend on getting on a train that is moving forward to negotiate benefits for the community at large and so if there are things that have to be signed, with respect to the business deal, that is the overall stadium deal, I'm willing to sign it so that I can fight for benefits for our community," Baskin says.
The delays of convening to meet to draft a CBA have been somewhat unknown. Legislator Baskin said she didn't know about this NDA until a week ago, which she described as "abrupt," but she also knows that they have to coordinate with New York state.
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"I did hear when I was asking questions about what was taking us so long to meet that we are working with the state on this deal. Overall, we know that the state has the largest portion of public dollar investment. So I believe that it was just coordinating with the state on how we were going to work together on a document that we plan to present to the Buffalo Bills," said Baskin.
Erie County Legislator Joe Lorigo was very outspoken about his distaste for an NDA deal, "My objection is I believe when we're talking about taxpayer money and investments in our community, there should be as much transparency as possible. Requiring three legislators to sign a nondisclosure agreement before they can participate in the process is wrong. You know, they need to be able to go and talk about what's happening with the CBA, with their community, with their colleagues and with the people that they represent," said Lorigo.
This NDA is not going to prohibit Baskin or any other legislators from continuing their efforts to listen to the public, but it will hinder them from speaking about the discussions had within the committee, which is comprised of Legislators April Baskin, John Mills and Tim Meyers as well as three attorneys, James Blackwell, Frank Jones, Jeremy Toth and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. Poloncarz has already signed the NDA as part of this committee.
It was noted by the Attorney Jeremy Toth that there has been some type of framework completed for this CBA done by the attorneys, which could be a reason as to why they are asking for an NDA.
"One of my concerns is that the county executive, the state, and the Bills have already negotiated the CBA and all they're going to do is present it to the members and say, 'This is what it is, take it or leave it.' Then you heard the acting county attorney tell you that the framework is done and he wants to show them the draft next week. So I think my concerns are valid," Lorigo says.
"The hope was to convene the first meeting of this committee next Wednesday or Thursday, where we would share the first draft of the CBA and discuss what we like and what we don't like about it. That would be an internal meeting," said Toth during the session.
The committee is to meet soon, but a date is still unknown.
"It was suggested and it was a hope that we could meet by next Wednesday. I think it's good to meet sooner than later. But I caution people of saying that we're meeting Wednesday because that was not something that I agreed to and to the best of my knowledge, neither did any other of the legislators who sit on the CBA Committee," said Baskin
We reached out to County Executive Mark Poloncarz and received no response.
To hear Baskin and Lorigo as well as the discussion, see the players below: