No Saugerties Casino - Reader Response

SAUGERTIES TIMES

OCT. 13, 2005

APPALLED BY SPICER

To the Editor:
An interesting preview of what dealing with the Seneca-Cayuga tribe would be like, should their casino proposal reach the point of negotiation, is provided by the interview with Chief Paul Spicer ["New Sheriff in Town," Saugerties Times, October 6, 2005], his letter ["Seneca-Cayuga Respond," Saugerties Times, October 6, 2005] and the response to that letter by Andrea Barrist Stern. In all of my references to Chief Spicer, I would like it understood that I am addressing him as a spokesperson for his Nation's casino business.

Chief Spicer states the casino "will not go where it is not wanted," adding that "there won't be any hard feelings ... if [we] don't [accept the Seneca-Cayuga casino proposal]." Let us look at what he says and consider whether he sounds like this might be the case. He goes on, referring to his predecessor's statement that the tribe would have "sovereign immunity" from many potential impacts caused by the proposed casino, saying that was "a terrible thing to say" [emphasis mine]. And that the "correct answer" is that "of course, we'll find a way to share" [emphasis mine again]. First of all, it is a fact that the tribe would have sovereign immunity from all local law, ordinances and regulations. Further, if they don't keep any agreements they make, legal challenges to them require costly and ponderously slow litigation in the federal courts (try $1.2 million taxpayer money plus $800,000 pro bono services in Connecticut). Finally, Chief Spicer has the nerve to say they would "share" costs for which the casino would be fully responsible.

Chief Spicer is not done yet. He tells us that "we feel about New York the way the Jewish people feel about Israel." Unless I misunderstand, Chief Spicer already has the same privileges that a Jewish person has in Israel: he can come to New York and live here as a citizen of New York state. What they both cannot do, and shouldn't want to do, is set up a business which is costly and destructive to that state. It is a question of interest to me as to why Chief Spicer uses this analogy at all.

A hint of what he is about comes soon after in his response to a question about "reservation shopping," a term used by critics to describe the efforts of wealthy developers like Wilmot. He says, not addressing the question, "we kind of felt that way about you all," referring to "the Europeans [who] were the original reservation shoppers." Ask yourself why he chose not to answer the question and, rather, moves to the historical violations of our colonial history. Chief Spicer uses similar tactics when asked about the impacts on Connecticut, a region much like our own, of the casinos there: instead of addressing them he talks about Oklahoma (where they have casinos), a region most unlike our own.

The letter exchanges are further revealing; Chief Spicer is, at best, very poorly informed. There are books, reports, articles and studies on the impact of casinos on the localities where they are placed; this includes government, university, and individual sources. It is documented that crime and other social problems do increase where casinos are developed. Andrea Barrist Stern's excellent response covers much of what can be said. I'll add just a additional few points of issue.

Chief Spicer's "responses" are themselves unsupportable.

1. I have, myself, visited many casinos in Atlantic City and they are "dark, without windows, with little talking and even less laughter." Most people are losing money, what would you expect?

2. Labor laws do not apply to tribal casinos. His response does not even address the point.

3. When addressing the study that casinos cost the state $3-$5 for every $1 they provide, he says that "is not only ridiculous" but that there "are no supporting facts." This, after, in his interview, he says "I never heard of the guy," referring to testimony on Capitol Hill by a professor at the University of Illinois, an authority on the social and economic impacts of Indian casinos. He says, further, of this professor, "I'd want to know what his agenda is." It is, obviously, telling our Congress the results of his research studies. I don't need to be told the agenda of Wilmot and the Seneca-Cayuga tribe with regard to Saugerties; I think I know it.

I might say that the tone of his letter doesn't sound like the Seneca-Cayugas "won't have hard feelings" if Saugerties rejects their proposal.

Chief Spicer does give at least one "fact:" He says that unemployment in Ledyard went from 4.7 percent in 1990 to 2.6 percent in 2000 and to 1.4 percent in 2004, stating that Foxwoods was built to its current size in 1992. In fact, the state of Connecticut Web site shows unemployment in the town of Ledyard to be 4.6 percent in 1996, 1.5 percent in 2000, 3.6 percent in 2004 and, currently, is 4.1 percent! It follows the rates of unemployment in the state in general. The Web site is http://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/lmi/laus/lmlftown.htm, check it yourself.

I do know that the local employment statistics where large casinos have sprung up are largely determined by workers coming from outside the area; the figures cannot address the impact on local residents. It appears to be true, however, that low wage workers do benefit from the health care packages that small businesses cannot afford; in this, local small businesses are disadvantaged. On the other hand, the Ledyard officials who visited with us said that turnover at the casinos was 50 percent initially and has dropped to 20 percent at present. Doesn't sound like happy campers to me.

Finally, as a New York state licensed clinical psychologist, I need to say that Chief Spicer's assertion that pathological gamblers are "addictive personalities [who] would just find another venue" for their addiction like alcohol or narcotics has no foundation. "Addictive personalities" have not been identified by researchers in the area and addictions do not operate in this manner.

If Chief Spicer's goal was to lull this community into some sense of safety, he has failed, miserably, in my case. I am appalled by his presentation in the interview and in his letter and my vigilance is much raised with regard to the Seneca-Cayuga's intentions towards my community. I trust that I am not alone.

Meyer A. Rothberg
Saugerties

LEARN THE FACTS

To the Editor:
Paul Spicer dismisses criticism of casino gambling as so much unverified hot air. To those who prefer sound bites and studied ignorance his claims might seem common sense. He would do well to read (for a start) Gambling in America, Costs and Benefits, Cambridge University Press, 2004, by Earl L. Grinols, professor of economics at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Professor Grinols was one of the first academicians to recommend to Congress the creation of a national commission to study the impact of casino gambling. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission, established in 1996 (with bitter opposition of the casino gambling industry) issued its final report in 1999, recommending a moratorium on gambling expansion, a recommendation all but ignored.

In his book, Grinols applies rigorous cost/benefit analyses to casino gambling. He examines the "externalities" created by casinos, the net negative effects that do not operate through market process, that are not paid for by casinos or anticipated by gamblers, often ignored by policymakers, and are borne by society at large and by government.

His work examines available empirical studies - which are displayed in charts - to arrive at estimations of social ills and their monetary cost. Grinols discusses casino-related increases of crime, business and employment costs, bankruptcy, suicide, illness (including alcohol and drug-related, auto accidents, mental illness), social service costs, direct regulatory costs, family costs, abused dollars (such as gambling money from friends, family, employers), political corruption - which is by no means an exhaustive inventory of casino gambling ills. "The long term cost-to-benefit ratio from introducing casinos to a region that did not have them previously is greater than 3:1. As a device for raising taxes, casinos are more socially costly than a conventional tax. Even assuming that cost numbers are overstated by a factor of three and correcting them, casinos still barely fail a cost-benefit test." He shows you that data on which his conclusions are based.

Mr. Spicer's remarks that unemployment rates have gone down along with casino expansion in Ledyard and contends that "clearly, Foxwoods is an economic engine that drives the local labor force." Grinols devotes a chapter in his book to dissecting the misleading idea that more jobs necessarily mean economic development. Unemployment in an area can go down as a large number of low paid workers move into the area.

That doesn't help the residents of that area. If more people are employed as social workers, police, ambulance workers that is not a sign of prosperity.

As the gambling question heats up it behooves us all to educate ourselves and not be duped by self-serving and misleading spokespeople of an enormously profitable industry - profitable to them, not to the general public.

Arnold Lieber
Saugerties

'CHIEF SUGAR COAT'

To the Editor:
Hold your hats. Here comes Chief Sugar Coat!

To read the remarks of Paul Spicer quoted in last week's Saugerties Times, if we agree to his proposals for a casino-city, everyone will win; no one will lose. I say "we" because Mr. Spicer went out of his way to create an impression of low-key, neighborly reasonableness: "We are going to be honest and open and share," were his words. Tell that to the people of Ledyard and vicinity. Ledyard is a living testimony to the deceptions inherent in Indian proposals and the ravages of big time casinos.

Gambling is a sorry enterprise if there ever were one, for it is based on a get rich fantasy which impoverishes far more people that it profits. The only sure winner is the house. To garner its massive profits, a casino preys on peoples' weaknesses, people who often can least afford to gamble. No wonder most churches are against it. Gambling corrupts and ruins families. Family values?

And regarding values, let's look at what Spicer's project would do to the land itself. The Seneca-Cayugas propose erecting a virtual city: large hotel, massive casino, vast mall, arena, parking for 25,000 cars ... Where are they going to get enough water? Drain our aquifer dry? And their sewage? Put it back into the aquifer? Did I hear someone mention a golf course? Given all of the fertilizers and pesticides they require, golf courses are among the top polluters. I don't know what happened to the Indians' time-honored relationship with nature and wilderness, but to many "average persons in Ulster County," what the Indians want to build might be called a desecration. The fields and forests of the Winston farm will be devoured. What in God's name has happened?

Of course, there is the possibility that Chief Spicer may not be the prime mover driving this project. The man he is in league with, Thomas Wilmot, is no saint. The city of Rochester sued one of his subsidiaries for about $12 million in back taxes and fees on the Sibley Building. Tip of the iceberg? Does the Chief care how or with whom he makes money?

The sheer enormity of the project as relates to the size of our town threatens to distort the entire nature of the region. In short, casinos kill communities in many ways. Sad that this should be anyone's endeavor. Having not touched on the negative economic impact, crime and traffic congestion, infrastructural burden to Saugerties, extraterritoriality of an Indian state, this letter, although long, lets the Chief off easy.

Allen C. Fischer
Saugerties