Jack o' diamonds is a hard card to find. Photo by Flickr user Scott Namelrod; published under Creative Commons license.
The latest out of Albany: With just days left in the legislative session, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and key state legislators struck a late-night deal on Tuesday on a bill that would allow for four upstate casinos, according to several news reports.
Two of the casinos would be in the Catskills, the Times Union reports:
Cuomo had wanted just three casinos in a first phase of development, but Senate Republicans pushed for more immediate growth, particularly in the economically distressed Catskills. The bill would also accommodate Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos by allowing off-track betting corporations in Suffolk and Nassau counties to install up to 1,000 video lottery machines, the first sites other than racetracks to be agents of the Division of the Lottery, according to the person briefed.
According to an Associated Press report, the bill had not yet been printed when the deal was struck. A final bill was expected to be available to legislators on Wednesday, with voting by the Senate and Assembly expected on Thursday or Friday.
The AP's report states that just one of the four resorts would be in the Catskills, another in the Hudson Valley -- though, as locals know, there are at least a couple of counties' worth of overlap between the two regions. Most of the speculation around Catskills casinos has centered on Sullivan and Ulster counties, in the southeastern part of the Catskills.
Cuomo has been talking up his upstate casino proposal for several months, but the idea of casinos in the Catskills has a much longer history, dating back to the collapse of the great Borscht Belt hotels in the 1970s and 80s. Despite Albany's raging case of casino fever, many locals are skeptical that anything will actually get built, the New York Times reported last week:
The response to the latest frenzy of proposals, however, has been wary, even in the Catskills, where there is political support for casinos and the jobs and revenue they might bring. Residents, though, have become increasingly skeptical about whether the gambling projects will progress any further than those that failed to materialize before.
“Business is excited, but the average Joe could give two damns,” said Tony Cellini, a casino supporter and the longtime town supervisor of Thompson, where the Concord was. “The people up here are sick and tired about having that golden carrot dangled in front of them.”
In a brief editorial in today's paper, the Daily Freeman blasted the bill -- the text of which has not yet been made public. Until recently, the Freeman editorial department writes, conventional wisdom around the Capitol held that voters would get a chance to decide whether New York State would allow casinos. Not so, the Freeman writes:
...the bill being drafted to circumvent the voters is written to be effective only if voters reject casino gambling.
This makes a constitutional referendum to expand gambling into an offer you can’t refuse.
Like the old Soviet elections, you can vote anyway you want because the outcome has been preordained.
In addition to casinos, the AP reports, deals were also reached Tuesday on other big-ticket items on Cuomo's agenda: A 10-point women's equality package, a plan to create tax-free zones for startups near colleges, provisions aimed at fighting government corruption, and help for financially struggling upstate cities.
Update: On Wednesday around 12:45pm, Cuomo's office issued a press release announcing the agreement on the casino bill, dubbed the Upstate NY Gaming Economic Development Act, with a few more details on how the four upstate casinos will be taxed and regulated.
Also included in the release: A tidbit on what is in store for upstate gambling if the Act passes, but a statewide referendum on casino gambling later fails at the polls:
In the event that the gaming referendum does not pass, the Gaming Commission is authorized to competitively site up to four video lottery gaming facilities, one per region, in the Capital District, Eastern Southern Tier, Catskills, and Nassau County, based on revenue generation and economic development criteria.
The bill itself has also been posted online. Click the links to view PDF documents: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Memo.
