Decision making

Last Thursday, at its monthly meeting, the Sullivan County Legislature voted an official endorsement and on the following day staged a signing ceremony for a casino-hotel project planned by the St. Regis Mohawks and Park Place Entertainment at Kutsher’s Country Club.

Six days before the vote we received a statement from the St. Regis Mohawks and Park Place Entertainment informing us that this official endorsement would be made.

The Mohawk’s statement went on to tell us the county endorsement would be based on a $15-million annual “host benefit,” negotiated in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the county and the tribe. “With the agreement in place, the county will give the Bureau of Indian Affairs its official approval of the casino/resort and urge the Department of the Interior to take the land in trust.”

Bottom line, this was a “quid pro quo” deal, a product delivered for a fee paid. The question is, did the seller have the authority to offer this product for sale?

We question the propriety of this unilateral legislative action, which in addition to welcoming casino gambling into the community, also surrenders sovereignty over 66 acres of our county.

Did I miss something? Did we have an election while I was in the bathroom? When did our Legislature poll the rest of us about this?

Much more than it did at the time of the Legislature’s 1996 endorsement of casino gambling at Monticello Raceway, the county has begun to forge a new economy and welcome new residents and businesses. Eastern Sullivan has begun to swell with overflow from Orange County. The river valley has developed a thriving arts community and an international venue for the performing arts is being created in Bethel. The Concord, according to developer Louis Capelli, will become a showplace resort hotel whether gambling comes to Sullivan County or not.

These changes were impressive enough that Assemblyman Jake Gunther, heretofore one of strongest advocates of legalized casino gambling, recently asked a Wurtsboro audience including the Governor and the Speaker of the NY State Assembly, “Do we really need gambling?”

Will the upscale business people who would relocate to our new corporate park see a nearby casino as a boon or an employee distraction and a threat to the quality of family life?

Will casino gambling live peacefully with the growing second-home industry and arts communities? Will Sullivan be abandoning long-sought-after efforts for economic diversification so that casino owners might replace the hotel owners of old as the county’s new king makers?

Who should get to decide?

County officials say they are not authorized to put a question about gaming on the Sullivan County ballot. Only the state can do that as part of its still-pending approval of the project.

To that point, Senator John Bonacic recently told a Lumberland audience that he would not favor the approval of Indian casino gambling in the county without a local referendum. We believe the senator is correct and we hope all his constituents carefully follow and encourage his efforts to ensure that a referendum is part of that process.

As we said the first time around with this, gambling may be a great thing for Sullivan County and presented to the voters it may win their overwhelming endorsement.

Then again, the voters might decide that $15 million a year for Sullivan County’s future may not be any closer to fair market price than the $24 that the Dutch paid the Indians for Manhattan. Why don’t we just run the idea up the flagpole and see who salutes?

David Hulse, News Editor