A
December 16 panel discussion about what a casino in downtown Rochester might be
like showed at least one thing: The issue is still in the forefront of many
people’s minds. A crowd of well over 100 gathered at the Rochester Riverside
Convention Center for the session, which was convened by Rochester Mayor Bill
Johnson.
Last
summer, local developer Tom Wilmot announced a plan to create a casino in downtown
Rochester with the involvement of the Seneca-Cayuga tribe of Oklahoma. That
plan is no longer alive, but Johnson, an outspoken critic of it, says the
public still needs information about casinos.
“This
issue continues to bubble up,” he said at the forum, “and my belief is that
this is the best time to have this kind of forum, when there is no active
proposal on the table. It is a way for us to get better information so that if
and when it resurfaces, the community can really approach it from a knowledge
basis as opposed to an emotional base.”
It
was hard to tell what that emotional base might have been, or if indeed anyone
with strong emotions showed up for the meeting. Though billed as a
question-and-answer session, the questions were filtered through the city’s
Deputy Commissioner of Community Development Larry Stid, who read them from
index cards.
Still,
the three-member panel broke some new ground in the community’s discussion of
the merits and drawbacks of a downtown Indian casino. (Until the state
legalizes gambling, an Indian-run casino is the only kind that would be able to
operate in Rochester’s downtown.)
Speakers at
the forum were
Niagara Falls Mayor Vince Anello, economist and gaming consultant Eugene
Christiansen, and Albany Law School Attorney Robert Batson.The Seneca Indian Nation operates a casino in the heart of Niagara
Falls, so Anello brought to the panel something that the other two could not
— blunt observations of the relationship between the city and the tribe.
Anello characterized that relationship like this:
“The
Senecas are being very good neighbors to us, that’s for sure. But they’re being
good neighbors like when you have a neighbor where the neighbor stays in his
yard, you stay in your yard, and you’re good neighbors. There isn’t any sharing
of the lawnmower or anything like that. And that’s the problem that we’re
having right now. Because when it comes time to plow the streets, it’s our
plows that plow the streets. When it’s time to send an extra cop downtown, it’s
our tax dollars to send the police officer downtown.”
Niagara
Falls is supposed to get a share of the casino’s revenue to pay for such
increases in public services. But that money — about $9.5 million — is
sitting in the state treasury in Albany, said Anello, where it’s being used as
a “political football.”
That’s
because under the agreement between the state and the tribe, the state
legislature must appropriate Niagara Falls’ share of the casino money each
year. Because of that arrangement, state legislators can hold the payment
hostage, voting to release it only in exchange for other demands. That’s
something that clearly frustrates Anello.
“Get
it in writing and make sure that what’s written is well understood by everyone:
That’s the advice that I would give to the people here,” he said.
Aside
from an arrangement that leaves his city essentially powerless over its share
of the revenue, Anello said the changes wrought by the casino are a mixed bag.
“The
job creation is real,” he said, as is the rise in property values on adjacent
streets, which the city has taken to calling its “entertainment district.”
Furthermore, he said, there’s been no substantial increase in crime or problems
caused by compulsive gambling.
But
Anello also notes that casino gambling isn’t new to his community: Casino
Niagara in Ontario, Canada, is only a 12-minute walk from his office at city
hall. “It isn’t as if we didn’t have a casino within our community,” he said.
He
also warns against making direct comparisons between Rochester and Niagara
Falls.
“Economically,”
he said of Rochester, “it’s doing pretty well. That’s in stark contrast to the
city of Niagara Falls, which has had 35 years of decline.” Prime downtown
storefronts were covered in plywood, he said, “so when the casino came, we saw
it as a little bit of a salvation.”
It’s
lived up to that expectation, at least to some degree, said Anello, “but you
can’t take away the impact of 52 acres being taken out of the heart of your
city that you can’t collect taxes on.”
But the impact goes beyond
tax collection, the other panelists said.
In
answer to a question about what might happen if a downtown casino failed,
Batson — a constitutional scholar and one-time state liaison to several
tribal governments — explained the (relatively) permanent nature of tribal
land designations. “Once land becomes Indian land,” he said, “the only way that
it can cease being Indian land is by an act of Congress. The tribe cannot sell
it. It doesn’t revert back to the municipality.” At those words a low whistle
circulated around the room. “It is always Indian land,” Batson said.
Batson
also pointed out that local governments’ rules and regulations don’t apply,
either.
“On
that Indian land your building codes do not apply,” he said. “Your zoning law
does not apply.” Anello affirmed that: The Senecas didn’t need to file a permit
or allow city inspectors into a 26-story high-rise hotel they are building in
Niagara Falls, he said.
Such
problems could have been averted for Niagara Falls if they had been addressed
in the agreement between the tribe and the state, said Batson. For instance,
the state could have insisted that tribal building codes be comparable to local
ones.
“That
has been included in compacts,” he said. “Otherwise you can get some huge
monolith facility that takes up the entire amount of land that’s conveyed to
the tribe.”
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2004.
