the taxpayers of nassau county offer to retrain NIFA MEMBER CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, A FORMER NASSAU OTB DIRECTOR AS A LIFEGUARD
Steve Bellone sits in his office a day after winning re-election for Suffolk County executive, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015. Photo Credit: Jeffrey Basinger
Rick Brand
Rick Brand is a longtime Newsday reporter who writes about politics and government on Long Island.
The
Bellone administration, which three years ago lobbied for a local
casino to help bail out the bankrupt Suffolk Off-Track Betting Corp. and
fiscally ailing county, has just become the latest and most unexpected
roadblock for the tortured project.
Rick Brand is a longtime Newsday reporter who writes about politics and government on Long Island. County attorneys, called to appear before federal bankruptcy Judge Carla Craig late last month, are opposing a motion that would require the county itself to issue building permits for a proposed casino to be located on 31 acres in Medford.
The motion comes after Suffolk OTB in August asked the court to force the state Gaming Commission or Brookhaven Town to review site plans and issue building permits for the 90,500-square-foot casino, which would have 1,000 electronic slot machines called video lottery terminals. Both entities earlier had refused to act.
Lawyers for OTB, the county, Brookhaven, the state and OTB creditors are scheduled to appear in Craig's Manhattan courtroom Thursday, at which time OTB officials hope for a ruling.
County Attorney Dennis Brown maintains Suffolk has no power to act and neither the capacity nor the authority to regulate building. He added OTB is a separate public benefit corporation over which the county has no control. Brown charged OTB is "trying to use this court . . . to evade the ability of the public to have input of what is actually developed . . . in a particular neighborhood." He added OTB should instead sue Brookhaven Town in state court to force it to approve its site plan.
However, Craig, in the Oct. 28 hearing, gave a strong indication of where she stands. "This is the most self-defeating thing I've seen and I've seen a lot of self-defeating things," she said. "It's beyond my comprehension frankly that you are not doing everything you can to get this built" rather than put Suffolk OTB "further in the hole."
OTB lawyers say there is no attempt to evade scrutiny and OTB is doing needed environmental reviews, has applied to the health department for sewer permits and is willing to pay the county for any costs involved in processing permits. "We're not trying to evade, we're just trying to get started," said Christopher Graham, OTB bankruptcy lawyer.
They also said that OTB needs no site plan review and that the secretary of state issued regulations in 1998 that allows counties to enforce building rules for local OTBs where the town does not act. Brown maintained those rules are aimed at upstate OTBs, which cover more than one county.
However, town officials have issued a letter to OTB saying it meets zoning requirements and its attorney says the town has no role in reviewing the project. The town planning commissioner also listed nearly a dozen projects in the last 20 years -- including two police precincts, the new county jail and the former Foley nursing home -- for which the county sought no town reviews.
Robert Christmas, Brookhaven's attorney, also said that OTB has strong county ties, noting all three OTB board members are appointed by the county legislature and the county is the major beneficiary of OTB profits. "This is not some distant entity to the county," he said. "It may be some strange kind of bastard government child, but if it is a bastard government child, it's the county's."
No comments:
Post a Comment