CUOMO TO UPSTATE NEW YORK: FRACK YOU—denies Southern Tier right to drill for natural gas or build a casino

[jmyrlefuller]

by J. Myrle Fuller
December 17, 2014

[float=left][/float]Only six weeks after winning re-election as Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo announced a two-pronged blow to the economically depressed areas of upstate New York, by denying the area a casino gambling license and announcing that he would continue indefinitely the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the state.

In regard to hydraulic fracturing (a practice that allows drillers to reach deeper pockets of natural gas than conventional methods), Cuomo released a long-awaited report from the New York State Health Department which said, in summary, that there was not enough certainty in the evidence to determine if it was safe or not. Despite the inconclusive result, Acting Health Commissioner Howard Zucker stated to Cuomo that he would not feel comfortable living in an area where hydrofracking was taking place, which will in turn prompt the state bureaucracies to impose an outright ban on the practice, which is already legal elsewhere in the country. Cuomo also alluded to the loud and confrontational anti-fracking protesters who campaigned several years for a ban on the practice in making his decision.

Cuomo (laughably) claimed that because the decision was released after the elections that it could not be politically motivated—conveniently ignoring the fact that delaying the report until after the election insulated Cuomo from backlash against the decision and requiring opponents to wait four full years to respond at the ballot box.

On the casino gaming front, the state was tasked with choosing seven locations for casino gaming, including one that was supposed to be placed in the Southern Tier. Three sites were chosen: one in the Catskills (where the demise of the Borscht Belt has left a wake of numerous closed resorts), one in the suburbs of the state capital of Albany, and one in the Finger Lakes, just outside the race-based exclusivity zone of the Seneca Nation of Indians, who operate three casinos in Western New York.

Cuomo openly admitted he would not allow a casino to open in the Southern Tier region, because he did not believe the casino would be an effective economic stimulus. Jeff Gural, who led the Southern Tier proposal of a casino at Tioga Downs, responded angrily after his proposal was rejected and threatened to close his existing gambling facilities at Vernon Downs. When pressed on how to lift the Southern Tier, a region that has long suffered from economic blight, out of its malaise, Cuomo refused to give an answer.

Most of the affected areas voted for Rob Astorino, Cuomo's Republican opponent, in the 2014 election.[/font]

[katzenjammer]

Cuomo doesn't give a tinker's damn about the economically depressed areas of upstate New York.

[Oceander]

Cuomo doesn't give a tinker's damn about the economically depressed areas of upstate New York.

Of course not.  All the votes he needs - and wealthy cronies, too - are in the NYC area.

[jmyrlefuller]

One other note: Cuomo said, not too long ago, that "conservatives…have no place in the State of New York."