House of Cards
Community organizes against casino at Winston Farm

by Andrea Barrist Stern Saugerties Times June 2 , 2005

An estimated crowd of 300 people packed the Frank D. Greco Senior Citizen Center in Saugerties to overflowing on Tuesday evening for the first public meeting of No Saugerties Casino, Inc., an ad hoc coalition of community residents and organizations opposed to a proposal for a nearly 4 million-square foot Las Vegas-type casino at the 840-acre Winston Farm.
With the audience spilling out into the hallway and some attendees forced to listen from the outside through the building's open windows and emergency exit doors, organizers encouraged their neighbors to join one of the ten committees that have been formed, announced a lobbying day in Albany on June 7 with free buses available to transport people, and raised $7,200 to continue their fight.
In a community that is still muttering over its recent property revaluation, the ample and diverse turnout made clear the casino issue has now taken center stage. The issue has taken center stage, galvanizing the former Winston Farm Alliance organizers who had successfully fought a plan years ago to site a county dump at the same bucolic farm; church members opposed to gambling based on ethical and moral grounds; residents of neighboring towns concerned about the impact a Saugerties casino would have on their communities; a rare coupling of strange-bedfellow political adversaries; and a preponderance of recent arrivals to the town, who moved here for reasons very different than the proximity to the gaming operation proposed by the Oklahoma-based Seneca-Cayuga tribe.
Seated side by side in metallic folding chairs were gray-haired activists and twenty-somethings who have never carried a protest sign; donors who wrote $1,000 checks to the organization, and less affluent but equally sympathetic area residents who could afford $5.
In keeping with Saugerties' inimitable style, however, this call to action was not a siren but a song about Saugerties written for the Winston Farm Alliance years ago by musician/songwriter John Hall during the fight against the dump. The song was played over a portable stereo to kick off the meeting. "We should contact the Native Americans to let them know this is not about them, it is about the impact on our town," pastor Edward Schreiber of the Atonement Lutheran Church in Saugerties reminded the audience at one point, eliciting loud applause.
Unless they were intentionally keeping their presence a secret, it did not appear that representatives of either the Seneca-Cayugas or mall developer Thomas Wilmot, who has an option on the Winston Farm and is backing the tribe, were present at Tuesday's meeting. Wilmot and tribal representatives have refused repeated requests for interviews and comments concerning their casino plans. Several months ago, Seneca-Cayuga spokesperson Scott Wood told Saugerties Times that his tribe was interested in the Winston Farm for purposes other than a casino.
The Seneca-Cayuga tribe is proposing to build just under 4 million square feet of resort/casino/retail space, a 900-room hotel, a 750,000-square-foot convention center, a 20,000-seat sports and entertainment arena, a PGA-level golf course, and five parking garages to accommodate approximately 23,000 parking spaces. The casino would attract some 18,000 visitors daily, the tribe has told town officials, doubling the size of Saugerties, and would draw approximately 1 million gallons of water daily, the same amount now used by the village of Saugerties and the Glasco and Malden water districts.
The speakers at the two-and-a-half-hour meeting included Suzanne Durocher, a community organizer for the National Resources Defense Council and Don't Gamble Our Future, two groups that oppose the siting of casinos in Sullivan County; and Robert Johnstreet, a Saugerties resident, who quoted from a recently released report on crime by the New York City-based consulting firm Constantine & Aborn Advisory Services that was commissioned by Don't Gamble Our Future on the connection between gambling and crime.

CRIMINAL ELEMENT
Analyzing crime rates in communities where casinos exist such as Mississippi, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Connecticut, the report noted that crime rates for bank robberies, alcohol-related accidents, prostitution and drug arrests all increased in these locales in the years after the gaming operations opened. While crimes such as insurance fraud and embezzlement went up, so did violent crimes. In the first ten years that Atlantic City had casino gambling, the total crime index rose a staggering 258 percent, according to the report, which cited data from the Maryland attorney general. And Atlantic City's high crime rate persists despite its having three times as many police officers per capita as compared with the average for other cities in the Northeastern United States, the document states.
In Ledyard, Connecticut, where Foxwoods Resort Casino began operations in 1992, a 2000 study by the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis showed the incidence of crime in the community had increased 532 percent between 1990 and 1998. By 2002, the total number of crimes in Ledyard had begun to decline compared with a peak in 1995, but crime rates there remain well above the state average. A 1996 study of Wisconsin's 17 Native American casinos by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute found that the rates of major crimes (rape, murder, robbery and aggravated assault) in all 14 counties where casinos have been introduced were an average of 6.7 percent higher than they would have been had casinos not been introduced, according to the Constantine & Aborn report.
The increase in tourism alone did not account for the increase, concluded the report, which compared crime in other popular tourist communities such as Orlando, Florida. Nor is the increase in crime confined to the communities where casinos are located, according to the document, which noted crime also increases in neighboring areas. "It is virtually inescapable that there will be an increase in crime from introducing gambling," the report concluded.

ARE YOU WITH US ... OR AGAINST US?
In a move that may have heartened Tuesday's anti-casino crowd, it was announced that the four Ulster County legislators from Saugerties - Robert Aiello (R-I), Joseph Roberti (R-I), Alice Tipp (R-C), and Joan Feldmann (D-C) - and Ulster County majority leader Michael Stock (R-C), a Woodstock resident, whose district includes the Blue Mountain area of Saugerties, plan to submit a resolution at the legislature's June 9 session establishing a policy of not entering into casino discussions with Indian tribes if the host community opposes the project.
"We're going to do everything we can to stop this casino from coming to Saugerties," said Stock.
Tipp agreed. "I am vehemently opposed to this here casino coming to our beautiful town of Saugerties," she said.
Based on the wording of the draft resolution, however, it does not appear that the measure would automatically preclude casinos in communities where a majority of residents do not want them. Ulster County legislator Brian Shapiro (D-I-W) of Woodstock was also at the meeting and said he will do everything possible to thwart a casino in Ulster County.
Saugerties town supervisor Greg Helsmoortel, who did not speak at the meeting, has said he intends to introduce a resolution at the town board's June 8 meeting opposing the casino but it is still unclear whether he will have a majority of the board voting with him. Councilman Thomas Macarille (non-enrolled), who also did not address the group, refused to answer when one resident put him on the spot, asking him to state his position.
But the crowd's real acrimony was reserved for Ulster County legislature chairman Richard Gerentine (R-I-C), a Marlboro resident who said, "I have to look at the whole of Ulster County ... Before any decision is made ... [it] will be looked at very closely. Your input will be looked at."
"You already have our input," one resident blurted back at him. When Gerentine said that if a casino were to be built it would not be for another three to five years, the audience hissed and booed. "He had his chance," one angry resident said loudly to those seated around him.

STRAIGHT OUTTA BROOKLYN
The star of Tuesday's meeting was clearly state assemblyman James Brennan (D-Brooklyn), chairman of the assembly standing committee on oversight and investigation, one of four committees that conducted an assembly hearing in April on plans for the sudden proliferation of casino gambling in New York State. "No man, woman or child is safe while the New York State legislature is in session, but there are only four weeks to go," Brennan said, noting he is hopeful governor George Pataki will not submit legislation for five casinos in Sullivan and Ulster counties - including the proposed gaming resort at the Winston Farm - during the remainder of the current session that ends on June 23.
Several months ago, Pataki gave the state legislature a measure for five casinos to settle Indian land claims against New York that have been ongoing for some 30 years. "In order to understand what has been happening, you need to separate in your mind the issue of compensating the Iroquois Indian Nations for things that happened to them several hundred years ago from the question of casinos," said Brennan. "The question of casinos is a development question and the question of compensating the tribes for things that occurred many years ago is a compensation question - and those two questions don't correlate very nicely."
Pataki has since withdrawn the legislation but his spokesperson, Todd Alhart, has told Saugerties Times this was done to evaluate the impact of a March 29 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the New York Oneidas and taxes owed by the tribe to the city of Sherrill. (The decision ruled that lands that were acquired off-reservation many years after the reservations were established had to remain taxable. The tribe is now seeking to have some 17,000 acres of land in the Syracuse area that it has acquired declared "trust" - or sovereign - lands by the federal government.)
In 2001, the state legislature authorized the governor to enter into negotiations with three Indian tribes, noted Brennan, explaining how the Oklahoma-based Seneca-Cayuga tribe has come to claim land in New York State. Pataki's bill, however, included settlements with five tribes. The land claim by the St. Regis Mohawks, one of the five, has more legitimacy than the others, according to the assemblyman, but he said "lobbyists, law firms and political friends of certain people are pressuring the governor to add more than just the Mohawk deal to the legislation before the end of the session."

TRIBAL MUSICAL CHAIRS
The Seneca-Cayugas have "come here shopping for a casino" as a result of successful litigation by the New York Cayugas, he said. The litigation was settled in 1999 in Federal District Court in favor of the tribe with a $250 million judgment against the state because when New York had acquired the land some 200 years ago it was without the approval of the federal government. The federal government has the exclusive right to deal with Indian tribes regarding such matters, according to the assemblyman. New York State, however, entered alone into agreements with various Iroquois tribes, including the Cayugas, over a 50-year period.
State attorney general Eliot Spitzer has argued for years that the Seneca-Cayugas are an amalgam of many different tribes and actually began their migration to Oklahoma from Ohio, not New York, according to Brennan. In 1937, the Oklahoma Seneca-Cayuga conducted a census that indicated only 15 of the tribe's 737 members identified themselves as Seneca or Cayuga Indians. Based on this, Spitzer argued that the tribe did not have valid claim against the state of New York, according to Brennan. The Federal District Court saw matters differently, however, ruling that the Seneca-Cayugas had claim to part of the New York Cayuga's settlement. As a result, the $250 million must be divided between the New York Cayuga and the Seneca-Cayuga, he said, noting, "Some people think the value of the Seneca-Cayuga's claim against the State of New York may be worth as little as $25 million or $50 million ... If this case were litigated to the end, they would win something but they would not win the value of a casino...[which] is worth between $1 billion and $2 billion."
Another tribe that the governor wants to settle with is the Stockbridge-Munsees of Wisconsin. "No court has ever ruled that the state owes them even one penny but the governor is giving them a casino worth between $1 billion and $2 billion," said Brennan. The assemblyman went on to explain why he believes that is the case. Pataki's former law firm, Plunkett and Jaffee, is the lobbyist for the Stockbridge-Munsees. John P. Cahill, a senior policy advisor to Pataki also comes from the firm, which contributes "hundreds of thousands of dollars to political campaigns."
The Seneca-Cayugas had originally connected with developer Thomas Wilmot to build a casino in Rochester but when that city fought a casino there, the tribe broke ranks and joined forces with Empire Resorts, Inc., owner of the Monticello Raceway and the former Concord Resort in Sullivan County. The latter development occurred after former attorney general Dennis Vacco, Spitzer's Republican predecessor, gave a draft of the agreement between the Seneca-Cayugas and Wilmot to Empire, according to Brennan.
Empire Resorts originally had the New York Cayugas as their corporate tribal partner and had been paying the tribe's attorneys, with the additional promise of $60 million if the casino were approved. Meanwhile, Empire and the tribe's attorneys altered the terms of the New York Cayuga's deal with the state in secret without the tribe's knowledge, reducing the tribe's acreage from 10,000 acres to 2,500 acres and its financial award from $250 million to $100 million. The revised agreement stated that the New York Cayugas had to drop their case but the state would be allowed to pursue its appeal. Not surprisingly, the leadership of the New York Cayugas repudiated the deal. Empire Resorts has continued to fund a segment of the tribe that remains pro-casino.
"That is where that situation stands today," said Brennan. "Empire Resorts has been having major problems with the New York Cayuga. We in the state assembly don't think we can intervene in this internal fighting within the New York Cayuga and impose a land claim settlement and a casino all in one package with all of these complex legal difficulties not resolved. As you can imagine, the [Oklahoma Seneca-Cayugas] seeing the mess involved with the New York Cayuga and Empire Resorts have been doing some shopping to find another corporate partner in their mission to get their casino."
Brennan said he believes Pataki will put forth a bill awarding a casino to the St. Regis Mohawks but it is unclear whether the governor will include the other four tribes - among them the New York Cayuga/Seneca-Cayuga - as part of the deal. At the same time, in order for the Seneca-Cayuga to take land in trust on which it could operate a casino, it would need the approval of the Department of the Interior, a process that could take several years, added Brennan, noting the tribe has not even submitted its application to the federal government yet.
"It's not clear whether governor Pataki would risk further political damage and try to push this through in the last few weeks of this session," said Brennan. "Certainly, next year, they may be back ... but I think you've got some time and your local government is going to be making some decisions."
Shandaken resident Mary Herrmann, one of the founders of the Catskill Heritage Alliance that has been fighting the proposed golf course and resort near Belleayre for the past six years, said members of her group were initially promised gambling would never be allowed there. Several years ago, an eleventh-hour agreement between the Modoc tribe and the Ulster County Legislature that would have permitted a casino in Ellenville included a provision requiring the county to foot the tribe's bill if it got into a legal fight with the host community. Said Herrmann, "It's been our experience with the Ulster County Legislature that you have to nail them down. Don't let them give you the runaround."

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