Mr. Paterson and the (Latest) Casino

Mr. Paterson and the (Latest) Casino

Gov. David Paterson of New York has only a few weeks left in office. But that hasn’t stopped him from making a bad deal with an out-of-state Indian tribe to build a casino in the Catskills.

Mr. Paterson clearly hasn’t learned enough from his disappointing tenure. The deal was mostly done in secret. Never mind that less than a month ago, the state’s inspector general issued a scathing report on the haphazard way a company was chosen to create another gambling facility at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens.

The governor, who was accused of basically handing off that decision to incompetent Democratic leaders in the State Senate, had to rescind the selection. That should not give anybody confidence in this new deal.

The agreement is supposed to get the Stockbridge-Munsee, a Wisconsin-based tribe, to drop its claims against New York State lands. In return, New York would support the tribe’s application to convert 330 acres to tribal territory to build the 584,000-square-foot casino. Under the deal, the tribe would pay the state and local community far less than nontribal casinos and certainly not enough to cover the social damage gambling leaves in its wake.

The location, 90 miles from New York City, means the new casino would compete for patrons with gambling operations in Monticello and Yonkers and the yet-to-be remodeled Aqueduct “racino.” Other New York-based tribes that have been looking for similar land swaps are furious.

Environmentalists have also vowed to fight the construction. The Natural Resources Defense Council has warned of “a dramatic spike” in air and water pollution in “one of the most important freshwater ecosystems” in the country.

The deal will need a revised environmental impact statement and approval from the federal Interior Department. And it will almost certainly go through the courts. Those hurdles are really the only good news about this whole last-minute Catskill deal from a departing Governor Paterson.