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Find out what is happening in Baldwin with New York
State Senator Todd Kaminsky and the 1st Precinct Police
Department. Sponsored by the Rotary Club of
Baldwin/Rockville Centre. Bring your ques ons.
gural will stick it to cuomo ehen the casino scross the river in nj opens
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assigned to mass general hodpitsl vorporation
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Local reaction to Tioga Downs full gaming license recommendation
Nichols, NY (WBNG Binghamton) The excitement of the news that Tioga Downs Casino could be expanded spread from New York City to the Southern Tier Wednesday. Nearly everyone at Tioga Downs Casino Wednesday was excited to hear the casino was recommended for a full gaming license. "The guests were all kind of rallied around watching the actual announcement, and we had party poppers and celebration music," Tioga Downs Casino Vice President of Operations Jeff Townsend said. People at the casino also said the full gaming license would not only help Tioga Downs, but the community as well. "New jobs for everybody, more jobs for everybody-- the area and everybody loves to play tables, and that's what they've been waiting for, no more Mohegan Sun," Joanne Young, from Harpursville, said. Townsend also told Action News that if Tioga Downs gets the license by early next year, they are looking to open a dealing school within weeks of that-- to start bringing jobs to the community. A Broome County official was also excited to hear the news Wednesday. In a statement, Broome County Executive Debbie Preston said: “We are thrilled to hear that the Gaming Commission did the right thing and awarded a casino license to Tioga Downs, in the true Southern Tier. This is a win for Mr. Gural, but also the local municipalities who will now benefit from the increase in traffic and spending in our community. This is a win-win for everyone and I thank the Gaming Facility Location Board for making this choice.”
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cuomo prays only to money and we believe we are free to do as we please eithout the religious preference of ny state
August 30, 2016
NYS Gaming Commission Unanimously Votes to License Tioga Downs as Upstate Resort Gaming Destination, Bringing New Jobs and Investment to Southern Tier
The New York State Gaming Commission today unanimously approved a commercial gaming license for Tioga Downs Casino, Racing and Entertainment in the Town of Nichols, ushering new jobs and investment, as well as revenue for local governments and school districts that will come to the region as a result.
“Tioga Downs’ expansion will foster hundreds of new jobs and spur much-needed economic development in the Southern Tier, plus generate millions of dollars for public schools and local governments – with all private money and zero taxpayer dollars,” Commission Executive Director Robert Williams said.
The destination resort includes a hotel, restaurants and other attractions that will serve as an additional incentive for tourists, including the more than 50 million tourists that visit New York City every year to Upstate regional attractions. The New York Gaming Facility Location Board, appointed by the Commission, selected Tioga Downs through a competitive bid process to be considered for licensure in January 2016.
Tioga Downs Casino, Racing and Entertainment in the Town of Nichols in Tioga County will be a $122.6 million investment and include a 32,590-square-foot casino with 1,000 slot machines and 50 gaming tables, 161 hotel rooms, multiple restaurants and lounges, a spa, an outdoor concert venue and a new Tioga Country Club clubhouse.
Combined with the previously licensed facilities in the Catskills, Finger Lakes and Capital Region, the four upstate destination resort casinos represent a capital investment of more than $1.4 billion in private money and will create more than 4,700 permanent jobs, with approximately 1,300 in Schenectady County, 1,050 in Sullivan County, and 1,250 in Seneca County and 1,100 in Tioga County. Construction – already underway at each facility – has created thousands of additional jobs and will ultimately generate more than 6 million construction hours.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed legislation in July 2013 mandating that 80 percent of the State’s net tax revenue from casino gaming be used for elementary and secondary education in addition to existing state aid or property tax relief. In addition, 10 percent of the State’s gross tax revenue will go to each applicable region where the casinos are sited for local government assistance, and 10 percent to be split between the host county and host municipality.
Tioga Downs estimates generating $32 million in tax revenue each year, which will be returned to localities in and beyond the Southern Tier via the aforementioned formula:
·$25.6 million for school aid statewide
·$3.2 million for surrounding counties in the Eastern Southern Tier/Finger Lakes Region
·$1.6 million for Tioga County
·$1.6 million for the Town of Nichols
The Tioga Downs license fee of $20 million will be distributed using the same formula.
The four resorts were selected competitively based on the economic development impact of the resort, and were restricted to three regions of the state: the Hudson Valley/Catskills Region, the Capital Region and the Eastern-Southern Tier/Finger Lakes Region.
Proposal One, overwhelmingly approved by New York voters in November of 2013, authorized the state legislature to approve up to seven destination gaming resorts in the state.
The Gaming Commission investigated the suitability of all projects, including character and financial stability, and set criteria for licensing individuals and businesses employed by or doing business with the resort. Destination gaming resorts and all related service industries will be strictly and comprehensively regulated by the Commission. The minimum gambling age in destination gaming resorts will be 21, and no smoking will be authorized in the four destination gaming resorts.
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defend yourself as needed because you are life is only useful for those who take your money and render false snd ineffective promises of healthcare
The tiger mosquito yellow fever army will soon buzz all these thieves, lawyers and incompetents into the great equalizer of dust
Coal Country Is Wary of Hillary Clinton’s Pledge to Help
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A train yard near a power plant in Cleveland, Va., on Wednesday.CreditMike Belleme for The New York Times
LEBANON, Va. — As Kevin Widener was growing up on his family’s tobacco farm in the rolling hills of southwest Virginia in the 1990s, lawmakers and lawyers in Washington were waging a war on smoking.
In 2006, as part of a larger program to help failing tobacco farmers, the federal government purchased the Widener homestead, and a separate legal settlement with the tobacco industry paid for Mr. Widener to attend community college, the start of a successful transition to nursing.
His mother, Sheila Snapp, now unemployed and surviving on government disability payments, was not so successful. “The tobacco money made a big difference for my son,” Ms. Snapp said while waiting for her clothes to dry at the Lost Sock Coin Laundry. “But it didn’t change anything for the rest of us.”
Now Washington is gunning for the second pillar of the Appalachian economy, coal, and again a politician, Hillary Clinton, is promising to help — with $30 billion over 10 years to revitalize coal country.
As in the case of tobacco, the idea is not to save the old economy, but to create a new one by retraining miners, investing in infrastructure and technology, and luring new industries.
Residents here are skeptical, and with good reason, some economists say. Much of the tobacco rescue came from a 1998 settlement between tobacco companies and more than 40 states, requiring the companies to pay more than $200 billion over 25 years to help the victims of tobacco — both those afflicted by cancer and lung disease, and those hurt economically by the decline of the industry.
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Gary Lambert, a retired coal machinist, on Thursday in Lebanon, Va. He sold his tobacco farm to the government and believes it was a poor deal.CreditMike Belleme for The New York Times
The commission and similar programs helped send some young people like Mr. Widener to college. It also spent money on projects similar to what Mrs. Clinton proposes: building broadband networks and retraining in fields such as computer repair. It lured a major government contractor, Northrop Grumman, to build an office here, and built call centers for Verizon and TurboTax.
But southwest Virginia is still suffering.
“The government can’t really help Appalachia,” said Gary Lambert, a retired coal machinist who also sold his tobacco farm to the federal government. “The tobacco settlement was a rip-off. They ripped us up one side and down the other.”
The settlement did pay for one of his sons, Thad, to go to college and become a teacher at the local high school. Another son, Brad, is back in the firing line: He’s a coal miner.
“I guess if you want to survive, you have to change,” Mr. Lambert said outside Pat’s Kountry Diner in Lebanon. He said things had gotten so bad that methamphetamine was so cheap that no one even made moonshine anymore.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers say her plan to save coal country is informed by the lessons of the tobacco programs. Trevor Houser, the plan’s chief architect and an energy economist who grew up in coal-dependent Wyoming, spent two weeks last summer traveling through coal towns there and in Appalachia, meeting with miners, mayors and local boards and councils, to get an understanding of what is needed, what works and what does not.
“We understand that each coal community is different,” Mr. Houser said. “What works in southeast Ohio is not necessarily going to work in southwest Virginia.”
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A tobacco settlement paid for one of Gary Lambert’s sons, Thad, left, to go to college and become a teacher at the local high school. Another son, Brad, right, is a coal miner.CreditMike Belleme for The New York Times
The effort would entail basic infrastructure work, such as road and sewage connections, along with new broadband, internet and cellphone technology; tax incentives for companies to locate in the region; and projects like turning old coal mines into industrial parks.
There would also be efforts to promote tourism, with projects like converting coal fields into parks for all-terrain vehicles.
The plan also calls for more spending on schools, modeled after a 1990s-era program to help schools in the Pacific Northwest after environmental regulations hit the lumber industry.
And Mrs. Clinton has something of a secret weapon to sell it: her running mate, Tim Kaine, the senator and former governor of Virginia, who has close ties in the region. His father-in-law is A. Linwood Holton Jr., a Republican and former Virginia governor who is from Big Stone Gap, in the heart of this region. And his wife, Anne Holton, has maintained her ties to Appalachia.
Some senior coal country Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, have also teamed up with Democrats to support their states’ economies.
But residents of southwest Virginia, 19 percent of whom live in poverty, can be forgiven for their skepticism.
“We have great broadband, we’ve gotten some call centers. That’s helped us,” said Terry Kilgore, chairman of the state’s Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission. “But it wasn’t enough to replace tobacco, and it’s not enough to replace coal.”
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Farmland near Lebanon, Va. Hillary Clinton’s proposed spending will include a mix of basic infrastructure, technology and tax incentives for new companies.CreditMike Belleme for The New York Times
It also seems to be far too little for the scale of the problem.
“I’m a lawyer. I rarely get offended by an offering of money to redress a wrong,” said State Senator Ben Chafin, a Republican, who watched the decline of his father’s tobacco farm. “But $3 billion a year won’t even be enough to buy everyone a custard cone.”
Porterfield Highway illustrates the region’s economic reality with billboards advertising high-speed broadband services, and rural aid programs to feed hungry children. In the tiny, largely boarded-up town of Sun, Va., Roger Bentley, a retired miner, recalled that more than a decade ago, Reynolds Metals Company built a factory here, lured by tax incentives to bring in non-tobacco companies. “But after the tax breaks run out,” he said, “they left.”
William M. Shobe, the director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the University of Virginia, said that as tobacco and coal decline, the best option for workers might simply be to leave.
“Retraining is fine, but without mobility, much of the value of that retraining will be lost,” he said. “You will have coal miners retrained in computer skills, but working in retail or not working at all.”
The tobacco commission did have some successes, Mr. Chafin said. The problem, he said, is that many of the college-educated workers at Northrop Grumman are not local. And the new call center jobs pay about $12 an hour — far less than a coal miner’s annual salary of $60,000 to $80,000.
“It’s hard to think of what other kind of retraining you give to coal miners,” he said. “There just isn’t enough here — and it’s dubious to say that broadband will save us.”
A 2015 study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute on the employment effects of President Obama’s climate change policies found that over all, the initiatives would cut jobs in industries like coal mining, but increase jobs in industries like wind and solar development, leading to a net gain of 24,342 jobs by 2030.
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Erica Gilliam, 23, testing a biofuel sample at OptaFuel in Wise, Va., on Wednesday.CreditMike Belleme for The New York Times
But that number, the study showed, includes a loss of 202,238 jobs associated with coal mining and coal-fired power generation in regions where they might not be replaced by the 256,177 new jobs associated with the manufacture of energy-efficient lighting and heating and cooling systems.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Mr. Houser said. “The green shoots of diversified growth are showing up a lot more slowly than the rapid decline of coal. You’re not going to flip a switch and suddenly have a robust diversified economy in southwest Virginia.”
In Wise, Va., a few miles from Kentucky, Jack Kennedy, a circuit court official and a technophile who campaigns for the town’s economic development, is optimistic that the region could rebound as a center for technology. He is working to bring in companies that specialize in cybersecurity and drone technology. At least one firm, he said, has already flown a cargo drone from the town’s Lonesome Pine Airport.
“This is the perfect place for industries like drones and cybersecurity, because we’re so remote,” Mr. Kennedy said. “The drone industry is new. We can grow with it.”
Mr. Kennedy also pointed to OptaFuel, a lab that is researching and developing biofuels made from sawdust. The company started the lab in Wise because of tax breaks offered by the tobacco commission — and it brought highly educated employees like Vrusank Patil, an engineer who grew up in India, and Clint Ivey, a production manager who grew up in Georgia.
“If it wasn’t for the tobacco commission,” Mr. Ivey said, “we wouldn’t be here.”
About half of the team of 35 chemists, many dressed in skinny jeans and lab coats, are recent graduates of the University of Virginia’s small campus in Wise, he said. OptaFuel also employs a few former coal miners as security guards.
But, he conceded, “for the research jobs, you need a bachelor’s degree” — something most former coal miners do not have.
