Cuomo vows to collect from Senecas

Gov: You bet I’m collecting Indian casino cash

Forget politics — Gov. Cuomo has a major battle brewing on a different front. A defiant upstate Indian tribe is refusing to pay the cash-starved state a whopping $200 million Albany claims is its share of casino revenues — a dispute that could have a ripple effect on other gambling…



Gov: You bet I'm collecting Indian casino cash

Forget politics -- Gov. Cuomo has a major battle brewing on a different front.

A defiant upstate Indian tribe is refusing to pay the cash-starved state a whopping $200 million Albany claims is its share of casino revenues -- a dispute that could have a ripple effect on other gambling parlors, sources said.

The Seneca Nation of Indians, which operates three casinos in Western New York, argues it does not have to share the revenues because New York violated the "exclusivity" clause in its 2002 casino compact by permitting slot machines at nearby Hamburg, Batavia Downs and Finger Lakes tracks.


The controversy raises questions about a recent deal former Gov. David Paterson reached with the Wisconsin-based Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohicans to operate a casino in the Catskills town of Thompson.

That deal includes an "Indian exclusivity" clause that seeks to bar any nontribal operators from installing or operating slot machines in 16 downstate counties and city boroughs.

State officials say that the current dispute is not over competition and that the Seneca Nation is withholding the casino revenues to protest the state's attempt to tax lucrative tribal cigarette sales to non-Indians.

The new governor visited Jamestown last week and chatted with Seneca Nation President Robert Odawi Porter. But nothing was settled.

"I intend to collect all revenue the state is entitled to," Cuomo said.

If the sides can't reach an agreement, the matter would likely have to be resolved through lengthy arbitration.