andrew cuomo is a thief and a scam artist. any gambling provider would not close Nassau OTB on any day of the year that bettors want to bet. See also NY Const. ARt. 1, Sec. 3 and vote NO CUOMO, straight, gay or martian.
Send Andrew Cuomo to Rome
Judge Rejects Suit to Block Vote on Casinos
By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: October 16, 2013
ALBANY — A judge dismissed a lawsuit on Wednesday that sought to stop a casino gambling referendum next month in New York State, saying the legal challenge over the measure’s wording was “untimely and lacking in legal merit.”
The decision by Richard M. Platkin,
an acting justice on the State Supreme Court, came less than three
weeks before Election Day. The ballot question would amend the State
Constitution to allow up to seven casinos across the state.
Eric J. Snyder, a bankruptcy lawyer living in Brooklyn, had objected to the positive descriptive language in the measure’s ballot abstract,
which describes the referendum as “promoting job growth, increasing aid
to schools and permitting local governments to lower property taxes.”
The language was approved by the State Board of Elections in late July after consultation with the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who supports the measure.
In filing his suit, Mr. Snyder, who opposes casinos, said that the
language had unfairly tilted the measure toward passage, something borne
out by a recent Siena College poll showing
that support for it increased by nine percentage points when the
respondents were read the ballot abstract citing jobs, aid to schools
and lower taxes that could result from opening the casinos.
After the judge’s decision, Mr. Snyder said he would seek emergency
relief from the appellate courts, noting that the board had disregarded a
simpler version of the referendum — without what he called “advocacy
language” — that had initially been suggested by the office of the state
attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman.
“Ignoring the attorney general’s recommendation, the Board of Elections
changed the neutrally worded casino amendment by adding language to gain
voter support,” Mr. Snyder said in an e-mail, adding that “transparency
and proper notice are fundamental rights in this country, and that
includes New York.”
In dismissing the case, though, Justice Platkin said Mr. Snyder’s suit,
filed on Oct. 1, had come after the statute of limitations for such
ballot-language challenges had passed. (Such challenges are limited to a
14-day window after a referendum’s final day to be certified; this
year, that deadline was Aug. 19.)
And while Mr. Snyder had argued that he was not aware of the language at
that point, and that the Board of Elections did not post the referendum
to its Web site until Aug. 23, Justice Platkin seemed unimpressed. “The
petition/complaint would still be untimely,” he wrote in a 13-page
decision.
Thomas E. Connolly, spokesman for the Board of Elections, said, “We’re
pleased that Judge Platkin accepted the legal arguments which we raised
and that the election process can continue moving forward.”
But government watchdog groups that had criticized the ballot language
were unhappy. One of the organizations, the New York Public Interest
Research Group, said in a statement, “We’re disappointed that the judge
chose to block a legitimate discussion on the merits of whether the
state gamed the language of the casino amendment to tilt New Yorkers to a
yes vote.”
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