Shinnecocks See Casino as Boon to County
(5/15/2008) Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman said this week that he did not think casino gambling would be coming to the county anytime soon and never to his district if he had any say in the matter.
The Suffolk County Legislature’s Committee on Economic Development heard the case for Indian casino gambling as an economic boon to the county on May 7 from both Shinnecock Indian Nation leaders and consultants familiar with the benefits realized in Connecticut from those activities by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.
The figures presented by the consultant, the Connecticut Economic Resource Center, were compelling. Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun had combined contributions of $4.2 billion in revenue to the state from 1992 to April 2007. In the past three years alone, they have added $422 million to the state’s coffers. The 20,200 total employees of the casinos earn a payroll of $838 million. The consultant is a non-profit corporation dedicated to promoting Connecticut as a business location, funded primarily by utilities that operate in the state.
Mr. Schneiderman acknowledged that with a budget shortfall and economic hard times, “we are facing a fiscal crisis and looking at a lot of things that may not be palatable” under regular circumstances. “The county is facing a big budget deficit. There is a lot of money generated from Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods,” he said, “It’s one way to bring money in as a stimulus.”
Still, “it is not an economic stimulus for my district.” He said the traffic congestion and other potential negative impacts were not appropriate for the South Fork, but he might be open to supporting another community that wanted it. Mr. Schneiderman’s district includes a county-owned parcel in Westhampton off Sunrise Highway that was previously proposed as a tentative site by the tribe. Another parcel in the Calverton Enterprise Park, near Exit 69 off the Long Island Expressway in Riverhead Town, has also been discussed with that town’s leaders, but is not in Mr. Schneiderman’s district.
The Shinnecocks, who last year proposed a casino at the Aqueduct Racetrack, still confront the same issues that have prevented them from moving forward with plans in the past. They are not on the list of tribes recognized by the federal government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, although a United States District Court judge did acknowledge their legitimacy, which is one of the legal paths to federal recognition. New York has also recognized them since the 18th century, but without a federal listing, the state will not allow them to conduct gambling activities.
Mr. Schneiderman said he would like to see the tribe achieve a higher standard of living. He added that a previous proposal for the Shinnecocks to sell gasoline on the reservation with the possibility of no state or federal taxes, which comprise 70 to 80 cents of the cost of each gallon, would be a particularly fruitful enterprise in these times of high fuel prices.
County Executive Steve Levy, who was critical of the proposals for Southampton and the Calverton sites, was more conciliatory in his remarks regarding a general proposal. “We’d be happy to review a proposal,” he said, “but we definitely did not like their proposal for Southampton.”
The presentation of the casino proposals was referred to by George Stankevich, a legal representative of the Shinnecocks, as the beginning of a dialogue. In a letter to Legislator Wayne Horsley, who is the chairman of the Economic Development, Higher Education, and Energy Committee, Mr. Stankevich asked why, given the economic windfall experienced in Connecticut, “we are passively permitting the North Fork to be run over by traffic ferrying hundreds of millions of Long Island dollars” to that state’s casinos each year “when we could benefit by our own Native-American Shinnecock casinos?”
He said it was their hope that they would continue to meet with the committee as well as the whole of the Legislature to continue the discussions.
Mr. Schneiderman’s assessment of the meeting was that the discussions were “not all that serious. They asked the committee to make a presentation. It would be disrespectful not to allow them.”