While the world’s richest man Elon Musk has been promoting drastic cuts to the federal budget and workplaces, two Democratic lawmakers in New York are introducing a bill today to audit the so-called Buffalo Billion project.
The State of New York spent nearly $1 Billion ($959 million) to build an industrial plant near Buffalo which Musk’s company Tesla reportedly leases for $1 a year. (The plant currently produces chargers and related components for Tesla cars and trucks.)
Note: The bill is called “New York Determining Obligations and Guaranteeing Enforcement (DOGE) in Government Contracting Act.”
New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and State Assemblyman Micah Lasher said in a statement: “It is the height of hypocrisy that Elon Musk, the man who is dismantling federal agencies and doing enormous damage on the basis of wildly unsubstantiated claims of waste, fraud and abuse, is the beneficiary of one of the biggest, shadiest subsidy deals of all time.”
Media advisory: Today @MicahLasher and I will join protestors at noon outside of the Tesla showroom at 860 Washington St to announce new legislation to investigate any waste, fraud and abuse of NYS resources by Tesla.
See you there! pic.twitter.com/LDAsJZhltZ
— Brad Hoylman-Sigal
(@bradhoylman) March 29, 2025
In July 2023, The Wall Street Journal published the article “New York State Built Elon Musk a $1 Billion Factory. ‘It Was a Bad Deal,’” with the subhead, “New Tesla facility in Buffalo was supposed to house a huge solar-panel operation, but the project hasn’t turned out as planned.”
In the article, a conservative think tank is quoted as saying the investment was “the single biggest economic development boondoggle” in U.S. history.
According to the New York Times, Hoylman-Sigal and Lasher’s legislation suggests that New York should not renew its lease agreement with Tesla “if a review shows taxpayers got snookered in the original investment.”