Park Place CEO wins legislative battle for N.Y. casino

Anny Kuo

Friday, June 23, 2000 | 11 a.m.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The state Assembly has decided not to take any action on a measure requiring legislative and local authorization before Indian tribes can open gambling casinos on non-tribal lands in New York.

Assembly members reconvened this morning, supposedly for the last day of its regular 2000 session. But Patricia Lynch, spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said the chamber will not take up the casino gambling legislation.

Legislators late Thursday chose not to take up the bill after a key supporter of the measure, Assemblyman Jacob Gunther, a Democrat from Sullivan County, asked the Democrats in the majority for a four- to five-month delay.

The Senate passed the bill last week and Assembly passage would have meant final legislative approval. Gov. George Pataki would still have had to approve it for the bill to become law, and he had expressed some concerns with one provision.

The legislation would apply to construction of new casinos on off-reservation lands once they are approved by the federal government. It would also prevent the state's governor from exerting executive authority over casino construction.

Gunther apparently withdrew his support after extensive lobbying by Arthur Goldberg, chief executive officer of Park Place Entertainment Corp. of Las Vegas, one of the world's largest gambling companies. Park Place had signed an agreement with the tribal leaders of the St. Regis Mohawks to build a casino in Sullivan County and viewed the legislation as a potential delaying factor to its plans.

Earlier in the day Thursday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had expressed optimism that the legislation would be brought to the floor and passed by his chamber, saying: "We will have it on the calendar today."

Silver told Albany radio station WROW-AM that the Democrats in the majority in his chamber "overwhelmingly" said during a closed-door meeting last week that they favored the measure.

The bill has the support of casino magnate Donald Trump. The New York billionaire sees the Legislature as a potential obstacle to a proposed St. Regis Mohawk Casino in Sullivan County, which could compete with Trump's Atlantic City casinos.

The Mohawks received federal approval to build a casino on the Monticello Raceway, about 90 miles northwest of New York City. But it was uncertain what would become of that deal after Mohawk tribal leaders signed the separate agreement for a Catskill resort not on the raceway with Park Place.

Published reports said Goldberg told lawmakers he has a billion dollars that could be spent on buying land -- including the raceway -- for the proposed casino and asked for a few more months to prove his interest in investing in the county.

A statement from the Park Place said, "Mr. Goldberg is 100 percent committed to the project" and that the company is "confident that the Assembly will recognize the benefits to New York state and Sullivan County of having a resort gaming destination."

Lee Karr, chairman of the Sullivan County-based Coalition Against Casino Gambling, also expressed doubts about the measure, but for a different reason. He said the measure would make it "less difficult" to get casinos approved because lobbyists would be hard at work.

"It would effectively make an end run around the constitutional requirement for a (statewide) referendum," Karr said.