Bailing out New York State on the backs of Sullivan County

It looks like New York State will make out pretty well from Governor Pataki’s recent agreement with Indian tribes using casino deals to help settle land claims. The state gets released from hundreds of millions of dollars in claims. And by some estimates even a single casino could make almost $3 billion in slot-machine payments to the state over the next couple of decades.

The various parties involved in building casinos obviously feel that they will be making out pretty well too, judging by the money they appear to be spending on advertising. Area residents are being deluged with dueling TV ads from Empire Resorts, owner of the Monticello Raceway and partner in casino deals with Cayugas from both Oklahoma and New York, and the New York Oneida Nation, who got left out in the cold. The former ads tout the supposed economic benefits the casinos will bring; the latter accuse New York State of reneging on its promises to the Oneidas, and warns that tribes from all over the nation can now locate casinos in the county, exploiting local services and pulling profits out of state. Regardless of who’s right or wrong, it’s clear that both sides feel they have a lot at stake.

But while all these interested parties quarrel over who gets the loot and how it will be split up, there seems to be just one point of view left out: that of the people who live and work in Sullivan County and who ought to have the predominant say in what happens here.

The statistics suggest that fewer than half the local residents currently support casinos. A poll taken by the county last year showed casinos coming in dead last of a list of types of businesses people would like to see in the county. Both a 2004 Times Herald Record poll and a recent Stockbridge-Munsee poll showed public support for casinos by the people who live in Sullivan County coming in at less than 50 percent.

However desirable it might be for New York State to put its fiscal house in order and mete out long-delayed justice to Indian tribes with pending land claims, there is no reason that this has to be accomplished on the back of one small rural county. To concentrate five—or even three casinos—in one spot, against the will of the people, is both unfair and undemocratic—especially since Sullivan County is in fact nowhere near the various tribes’ original territories.

To the people of Sullivan County, it doesn’t matter whether tribal proprietors come from Oklahoma or from the Finger Lakes: if the state allows any party with whom it needs to make a deal to build casinos here, in the midst of our homes, without our approval, that in itself is a kind of wrongful taking. We certainly must be willing to bear our share of any reparations made to Indian tribes whose land was unquestionably taken from them, and much more brutally and blatantly, a couple of centuries ago. But to try to resolve one such taking by perpetrating another merely guarantees further negative consequences in the future.

That means that even if the building of the proposed casinos cannot be averted, the parties who stand to benefit—including New York State—need to do all they can to help mitigate the impact. First, we need a rigorous assessment of community costs and needs—something we already have, thanks to the late Assemblyman Jake Gunther and his Casino Task Force investigations. What do the task force documents say about costs in terms of traffic, school population and income diverted from local businesses? Will the soaring eagle featured in the Empire Resorts ad still make its home here if our natural resources are not protected from the consequences of this seemingly unplanned development?

Without knowing the facts, planning for how to deal with those facts and funding for those plans, this “bailout” of the economy will just create a fiasco calling for another bigger bailout down the road.

Those in favor of casinos and those against have a common interest in fully investigating these details. Either way it’s in all of our interests.

Dr. Punnybone

He Just Up and Left