Pathetic
When our county legislature next meets, it will probably overturn
the resolution it passed on September 9, supporting "full
adjudication of all issues before the DEC Administrative Law
Judge concerning the Belleayre Resort." If that's what
happens, it'll technically un-do another significant but this
time only a purely symbolic setback for the troubled project.
But the more substantial question it will raise is about competence:
who's making our county's policies and are they really capable
enough to understand what they're doing? The answer it seems,
is that many of our legislators aren't.
The resolution passed September 9 has no legal or regulatory
significance at all, though it did mark a new position
for the county, one that favors trying to insure the resort's
potential problems are going to continue to be reviewed as
thoroughly as possible. That was a major shift for a county
legislature whose attitude toward the project, set by former
chairman Ward Todd, has always been damn the residents, full
speed ahead. To us, it seemed an unusually thoughtful and
responsible turn, and we were surprised it received the overwhelming
bipartisan support it did. Now it turns out, half the legislature
or more is saying oops, that was a mistake. It wasn't a mistake.
It was a powerful position statement. It just wasn't the one
the developer and their party's leadership wanted them to
make.
Chairman Gerentine presumably has the votes now to move things
back to the Todd perspective, which as most people know, comes
from an eleven-acre parcel overlooking the resort's main entrance.
And if Gerentine succeeds, the biggest question it'll
raise isn't about the resort at all; It's what the hell is
going on with our county government? Todd & Gerentine's
new jail for instance was slated to cost each and every household
in the county $1,400 in new taxes∑and that was the price
before the project fell apart and costs started going through
the roof. What's the price tag up to now? We don't know yet,
but if these guys are doing the math, we're going to want
a second opinion. That's something we probably should have
had on the secret Modoc casino deal, on the boondoggle building
lease with their party's biggest financial contributor, and
on some other things we'll all be paying for well into the
future. As for the jail cost overruns, now it looks like we're
back to secret meetings on that too, just like old times.
Anyway, because The Phoenicia Times and The Olive Press were
the only newspapers to have actually covered the resort's
recent Issues Conference (Crossroads' lead counsel once introduced
our publisher as "our unofficial court reporter")
we are in a better position than most to offer an opinion
as to what actually happened there. We weren't planning on
doing that at all, since our coverage we felt, already reported
it both fairly and accurately. But the prospect of the county
overturning the only responsible action it's ever taken on
the thing has changed that for us, so we'll just sum up what
happened for you in those 12 weeks as simply as we can:
The Conference might have turned out to have been Crossroads
strongest showing to date, setting to rest the concerns of
many people statewide and validating the company's claims
that its project would prove "a model of environmental
responsibility." What happened however, was almost
exactly the reverse. One after another, the world's authorities
on the issues in question just SHREDDED the project's Draft
Environmental Impact Statement, characterizing its data and
conclusions as repeatedly false, misleading, inadequate and
incomplete, and calling for full adjudicatory hearings on
the issues. And so when the county called for exactly the
same thing three weeks ago, we thought it was tremendously
positive that somebody besides the judge seemed to have paid
attention. Whether it's all the issues or simply most of them
that need to be more fully explored going forward, that's
not for us but for the judge and DEC Commissioner Crotty to
decide. And they're going to make their decisions based on
the evidence, not on some symbolic piece of county political
business. In the end, whether the resolution stands or is
overturned doesn't amount to a proverbial hill of beans, except
for any nominal PR value that might have to the partisans
on either side.
Unfortunately but as has often been true on matters related
to the resort, our papers have been just about the only newspapers
that have reported this most recent story in a straight and
timely way. Although we didn't go to press Œtill almost
a week after the September vote, the story, much to our amazement,
actually "broke" in our last issue. Our county's
daily newspaper didn't even report the resolution until eleven
days after it passed, and not until after it had first editorialized
against it. Another local paper reported it two weeks
after the vote, in a story suggesting the resolution's meaning
was somehow hidden within it, so that our poor legislators
couldn't possibly have understood what they were voting on
and must have been somehow tricked. Actually the meat
of the thing was printed in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS across the
top of each of its three pages, and one would have to have
been ˆ to be charitable ˆ out to lunch not to have
understood what it was about.
For the legislature's majority party now to come back and
tell us they were too stupid to understand what they voted
for three weeks ago, that's really pathetic. But it's
only the most recent example of how they've been handling
the public's business for many, many years. As usual the Old
Boys side of the aisle still has the votes and they'll do
what they want. At least this time it's not us, the taxpayers,
who'll pay some ridiculous price. Next time as history and
our tax bills prove, it probably will be.
