Article found through Buffalo Rising, read their interperitation and the following discussion.

Buffalo Lawsuit Challenges a Casino Off Indian Land

NY Times
January 4, 2006
By DAVID STABA

BUFFALO, Jan. 3 - In the latest salvo between local advocates and government officials over this city's future, a coalition of citizens' groups, churches, business people and lawyers filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday to halt construction of an Indian casino on the Buffalo River waterfront.

The suit alleges that federal officials, including Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, failed to abide by a 1988 law regulating gambling facilities established off reservation land when they approved the proposed Buffalo casino. The proposed facility is one of three gambling sites in this region allowed under a 2002 compact between New York State and the Seneca Nation.

In legal papers filed in Federal District Court, the plaintiffs - led by a group called Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County - said that a Buffalo casino cannot be permitted under federal law, because the nine-acre site along the Buffalo River is not adjacent to an existing reservation and was not part of land claimed by the Seneca Nation.

In addition, the suit alleges that the approval process violated federal laws that require a study of the environmental impact of a proposed casino. The plaintiffs also say that demolition of a grain elevator at the proposed site would violate the National Historic Preservation Act.

"Some people have tried to make this into grain silos versus a casino, but this is a much more important issue," said Richard Lippes, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers. "These citizens aren't opposed to progress. They just want the right things to happen in the right way."

Barry E. Snyder, president of the Seneca Nation, was not available for comment Tuesday afternoon. But on Friday, he spoke dismissively of a possible lawsuit during the partial opening of a luxury hotel adjacent to the Senecas' existing casino in Niagara Falls.

"Lawsuits come and go - they don't interest me," Mr. Snyder was quoted as saying in The Buffalo News. "We took the opportunity to build a casino and hotel in Niagara Falls because no one else would do it. I've said the same of Buffalo, and we're going ahead. I'm a man of my word."

Proponents also maintain that the casino will create jobs as well as spur economic development in the long dormant area.

Several parties to the lawsuit, including Mr. Lippes and the Preservation Coalition of Erie County, also took part in recent years in two other significant civic lawsuits that sought to preserve land.

They were among the litigants who halted a state plan to build a marina, which would have been constructed atop limestone walls that were part of the original terminus of the Erie Canal, and a proposal by an international commission to build a steel bridge next to the Peace Bridge, which was built in 1927 and connects Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario.

In each instance, a judge ruled that the government agencies involved did not follow proper planning procedures. Both plans have since been revised. The waterfront plans, proposed by the Empire State Development Corporation, now include the restoration of the canal terminus and other historic elements. As for the bridge, a two-nation panel has recommended a sweeping cable-stayed bridge over the Niagara River.

"In both cases, we got something better," said Mr. Lippes, who served as general counsel to the primary plaintiff in each case.

Like the waterfront and Peace Bridge suits, the legal challenge to the proposed Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino is being financed in part by the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, which often provides money to educational or artistic organizations.

"We feel the need to make sure the laws are followed when making this kind of change to our community," said Janet Loew Day, a foundation trustee.

The plaintiffs said that taking the land for the proposed casino site off the tax rolls and creating, in essence, a tiny sovereign nation housing the casino would run counter to the canal restoration plans and other nascent development in the area.

LATEST NEWS

Business First of Buffalo - 1:48 PM EST Tuesday

Lawsuit filed against Buffalo casino

James Fink

Business First

Saying they are "calling the bluff" of the Seneca Gaming Corp., an anti-casino group Tuesday morning took the first step in an attempt to stop a proposed Buffalo casino.

The group of local individuals, civic and political leaders and the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation Tuesday filed a motion in U.S. Federal Court in opposition to the Seneca's plan. They allege the Seneca Gaming Corp., the casino arm of the Seneca Nation of Indians, failed to meet several federal requirements and guidelines dictated by the Seneca Nation Settlement Act, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and other federal provisions. Seneca Gaming plans to build the 100,000-square-foot gaming venue in Buffalo's Cobblestone District.

The opposition group has also voiced concerns about the environmental impact from either the casino and the historic status of the targeted site, which includes the long-vacant, circa 1912 H&O Oats grain elevators.

"This is not a done deal," said Joseph Finnerty, a partner in Stenger & Finnerty, coordinating counsel for the plaintiffs. "Procedures that should have been used were evaded. The Senecas are dealing you off the bottom of their deck."

Representatives from the Seneca Nation of Indians declined to comment.

Seneca Gaming Corp. began work on the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino on Dec. 8, just 24 hours before a mandated deadline expired. The deadline was spelled out in a 2002 compact between the Seneca Nation of Indians and Gov. George Pataki. That deal cleared the way for casinos in Niagara Falls and Salamanca and a third in Buffalo.

Finnerty, along with other members of the plaintiff team, contend the casino will have a negative impact on Buffalo including scaring away companies and private developers from investing in the city.

Casino supporters say the gaming venue, which is slated to open next year, will employ more than 1,000 people and produce an estimated $7 million in new revenues for cash-poor Buffalo in its first year of operation.

Not so, says Finnerty.

"Good jobs will be driven away," he said. "It will destroy waterfront development and will not promote private development along its peripheral. It will kill it (development)."

While the initial paperwork was filed Tuesday morning in federal court and it has been assigned to Federal Judge John Elfvin, it may be sometime before the case is heard, or even the most preliminary of hearings is held.

Many of the litigants had not yet been served with notice of the filing as of mid-morning Tuesday and all will be given a chance to respond.

"You can't predict what the courts will do," admitted Richard Lippes, another local attorney involved with the case.

Don Esmonde of the Buffalo News is doing a good job of interpreting this casino mess that we are in. His latest installment doesn't disappoint.

Casino opponents on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to knock this casino nonsense off track. Some of the more ignorant Buffalonians (or Buffalo Wannabees) are calling them obstructionists and wildly claiming that those standing in the way of a casino are simply upset that they are not getting a "piece of the action". I wouldn't believe that people honestly thought this way if I hadn't read it with my own eyes.

anyway, esmonde's article is below, with some emphasis added by me, to highlight his responses to the most prevalent or ignorant criticisms from casino lovers.

(by the way I don't hate casinos, I just think it's basically a doomsday scenario for Buffalo.)

Casino suit tries to save us from ourselves
By DONN ESMONDE
1-4-2006


It is a chance to turn back the clock before it strikes midnight.

It is a way to ward off regret, to avoid yet another "if only" lament, to stop the train before it rolls off the tracks.

It is a move to avoid another addition to the litany of projects and "progress" that have hurt more than helped us.

Look at it that way and you will know why they are doing this.

A lawsuit backed by various local groups, clergy and private citizens was filed Tuesday in federal court to stop the Seneca Nation of Indians from building a casino near the Buffalo waterfront.

"The deal that has been done," attorney Joe Finnerty said, "is not a done deal."

The anti-casino folks are not anti-development. They are simply against something going up that they think, with good reason, will hold us down. The same charitable foundation that pumped $4.5 million into the bioinformatics campus is bankrolling the lawsuit. That's how much the Wendt Foundation, led by attorney and grandfatherly Buffalo icon Bob Kresse, believes a casino will hurt us.

"People want to fight this, but they don't have the money that the state or the Senecas have," said Tom Lunt of the Wendt Foundation. "A private foundation can take that [monetary] risk and give local citizens a chance."

The legal arguments involve acts of Congress and moves by the secretary of the interior. The legal arguments are merely a path to avoid what these folks see as another Buffalo blunder.

The problem with a place where so little development happens is that people get desperate for anything. But if the last half-century taught us anything, it's that not every project is progress.

"A guy I know said he just wants to see something happen," Kresse said. "That's ludicrous. The idea of the city [permanently] turning over land to a sovereign nation for this purpose is preposterous."

If we could turn back the clock and build UB in Buffalo instead of the Amherst marshes, we would.

If we could reverse time and not slice up a good neighborhood with the Kensington Expressway; if we could erase the mistake of cutting off precious waterfront with the Niagara Thruway; if we could not blight downtown with a monolithic mall, we would.

This is about stopping a mistake before, for once, it is too late. The clock is ticking, but the bell has not tolled.

The last thing we need is another hole punched in a nearly dry economic basin. Tony Masiello, Byron Brown and others tout a casino as a job-creating spur to development. Yet this casino will mostly be about local gamblers filling Seneca Nation pockets. The Senecas take most of the profits, Albany gets a decent cut for doing nothing and Buffalo gets relative crumbs - even though local folks will drop most of the money.

Experts say the jobs created at a casino come at equal cost of jobs in the community, because dollars dropped at the casino used to be spent elsewhere. And if a stand-alone casino spurs growth, you sure can't tell it by Niagara Falls, N.Y.

I don't blame the Senecas; they merely took the sweet deal the governor and state lawmakers gave them. Just as I don't blame the folks who are trying to stop it.

This is how it works around here. Politicians fail us, but enlightened citizens use the courts to make it right. It is why we will get a better bridge to Canada. It is why we will get a historic Erie Canal project instead of the bland landscaping originally planned. Without a lawsuit, neither one would have happened. Now folks are suing to stop what looks like another mistake.

It is not the neatest, quickest or cleanest way to get the right thing done. But sometimes politicians leave people little choice.

e-mail: desmonde@buffnews.com