NFL owners have declared a lockout, casting doubt on the 2011 season.

But Erie County taxpayers by May 1 will deliver more than $640,000 to the Buffalo Bills for a category of support known as "game-day and operating expenses." That will be followed by a similar payment of more than $1 million Aug. 1, as quarterly checks to the team continue like clockwork.

Season or no season, taxpayers will still help the Bills maintain the county-owned Ralph Wilson Stadium, which the team may use for its sole profit.

It's one facet of the multifaceted contract involving the Buffalo Bills, Erie County and New York State through its Empire State Development Corp.

Now covering just two remaining seasons, the contract was sealed in 1998 by then-County Executive Dennis T. Gorski to keep the Bills viable in a small-market city without expecting taxpayers to build a new stadium.

Here's how the money flows each year: The county gives the Bills about $3 million a year to spend on major stadium improvements. This capital assistance has financed, for example, the scoreboard and the ribbon board ringing the stadium. This year, the Bills and Erie County will install a new playing surface.

Taxpayers also help the Bills pay game-day expenses linked to each home game -- for security personnel, ushers and ticket takers, for example -- and for regular stadium operating and maintenance expenses such as utilities, garbage disposal, pest control, cleaning and assorted repairs that involve painting, caulking, plumbing and wiring.

The Bills are reimbursed for those game-day and operating expenses under an allotment adjusted annually for the consumer price index and forwarded in front-loaded quarterly installments.

For the current lease year, which began last Aug. 1 and covered last season, the Bills are allowed $4.01 million. The final payment, 16 percent of the total, goes out by May 1.

A similar amount will be set for the next lease year that starts Aug. 1 to cover the 2011 season -- even while county government has cut support to libraries and cultural agencies to make ends meet.

"The Bills do well by county government," said Gary Earl Ross, a novelist, playwright and professor at the University at Buffalo's Educational Opportunity Center who has questioned the breadth of taxpayer support flowing to the NFL team.

"But sports has never been a bargain in terms of the cost-benefit analysis on what you get from supporting a sports team," he said, referring to a stadium that sits idle for most of the year. "My belief is we don't get our money's worth in terms of what's put out for the stadium."

"I think what we get from our cultural institutions is much better in the long run for both the city's and the county's intellectual development and for the county's economic development because people do travel to see plays," he said.

If the Bills play no games this year, the team will not charge Erie County for game-day expenses, said the Bills' treasurer, Jeffrey C. Littmann, from his Michigan office.

But the Bills will charge for operating expenses to maintain the stadium, even if it's idled by a lockout. Operating expenses make up the majority of those game-day and operating costs -- about $2.5 million, or 62 percent, of the $4 million, Littmann said.

When the Bills started playing occasional home games in Toronto, the team still had plenty of operating expenses to claim to cover their allotment for both game-day and operating support. "We have a responsibility and a duty to maintain the building, and we will do that," Littmann said.

The Bills take those payments seriously. By late 2007, the Bills had tired of receiving th county's quarterlypayments late because of ongoing budget doldrums. So the team insisted on almost $25,000 in interest allowed under the lease agreement.

"While we appreciate the continuing support of Erie County and New York State and recognize the investment made by the taxpayers in their stadium," Littmann wrote to the Empire State Development Corp. when it expressed surprise at the demand, "it must be viewed in the context of the extraordinary efforts being made by this franchise to remain domiciled in Western New York."

The Bills had fallen to the bottom quarter of the NFL when measuring revenues, and the team months earlier had requested the right to play games in Toronto to expand its reach. Then-County Executive Joel A. Giambra quickly agreed.

The Bills' allotment for game-day and operating expenses for the coming season -- the potential lockout -- will be calculated around Aug. 1 without being adjusted for the potential of an unused stadium.

The county can recover money it advances for game-day expenses for the 2011 season, but only after home games are canceled, said Grant Loomis, a spokesman for County Executive Chris Collins. The county cannot recover operating expenses because those go for the county-owned structure.

Collins has called the Bills "part and parcel of the soul of this community" and says they generate sales taxes, income taxes and other local spending.

mspina@buffnews.comnull