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Sullivan casino plans denied

Saturday, Jan. 5, 2008
By Adam Bosch
Times Herald-Record

MONTICELLO — The decades-old quest for casinos in Sullivan County could be over.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne yesterday denied land-into-trust applications from the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which proposed a casino at Monticello Raceway, and from the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans, which sought to build one in Bridgeville.

In denial letters to 22 tribes across the United States, all sent yesterday, Kempthorne expressed concern for how casinos might negatively affect tribal communities, causing American Indians to move hundreds of miles away from their reservations for work at gambling facilities, he said.

"The Tribe's application fails to carefully address and comprehensively analyze the potential negative impacts on reservation life and does not clearly demonstrate why these negative impacts should be outweighed by the financial benefits of tribal ownership of a remote gaming facility," a letter from Interior Department said.

The decision is bound to have repercussions in Sullivan County, where, for years, development plans and economic decisions have centered on the prospect of a casino. "It's always in the back of our heads as the one item that would have the ability to change things instantly," said county Legislature Chairman Jonathan Rouis.

The Interior Department had granted environmental approval to the Mohawks in 2006, and Gov. Eliot Spitzer approved the project last February. Kempthorne's signature would have allowed a $600 million casino on 30 off-reservation acres at Monticello Raceway.

Kempthorne's ruling does not totally kill the prospect of casinos. Applications can be reconsidered by a new secretary of the interior, U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey said. "It's only temporarily wounded," he said.

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