One Last Time
Eight and a half minutes before they turned out the lights on the last business day of their time in office, Pataki’s people at DEC clicked SEND and released their ruling on the Belleayre Resort developer’s SEQRA appeal. By the time anyone could read it, there was no one at the agency left to talk to. And the people who wrote it will soon, presumably, be long gone from public service in New York State.
No one, to be sure, was entirely happy with what they read. Not the developer, with six issues moving forward into what could be years of trial-like adjudication, motions and appeals. And certainly not those with concerns about the project, with six other issues == including some of the most controversial ones — now stricken from the list. The issue count, six and six, was of course crafted to convey the appearance of balance. That was not however, what this was about.
For six years we have tracked and often reported on the unusual relationship between the Belleayre Resort’s developers and the state agency in charge of its public review. Like most everyone with good sources in Albany, we were surprised by the decision. Even the most jaded Capital types familiar with every nuance of process and influence peddling were shocked by the audacity of releasing a decision for which those responsible have no further accountability. Some of course, say that’s just the way things work with government, and perhaps at times they do. We’d like to think those times are over for a while. But we imagine Pataki’s people took Governor Spitzer at his word that on Day 1 everything would change, and couldn’t resist one last dishonorable discharge. Just as the developer couldn’t resist leaking to the press advance word of the decision and its release date, along with his spin on it. Gosh, how’d they know that? Huh.
At this point we’re not going to itemize again the laundry list of questionable actions and decisions DEC has taken in its review of the largest development ever proposed for our towns and region, the Catskill Park, or the City’s watershed. We’re not going to cite related and similarly questionable actions by other state agencies including the Public Service Commission. These we believe, will come out in the adjudication process. We’re not even going to reference related actions by local and county officials, both elected and appointed, that we believe have been improper, unlawful, or both.
But we are going to affirm for about the 17th time that we believe in our state’s environmental review process and that ultimately it will produce in this case an outcome acceptable to most of us in the form of a properly reviewed and appropriately scaled project. When the process involved goes bad it’s our job to tell you, just as it’s also our job to tell you when things go right. And there is at least one level of DEC’s involvement where they have gone right, where politics hasn’t come into play, and where everything has been handled in an open, public, and extraordinarily thoughtful way. That is in the work of the judge assigned to the case, the Hon.Richard Wissler, whose handling of every aspect of it has been a model of integrity. So much so, it appears, that his last ruling didn’t sit well with his agency’s marching orders from Mr. Pataki’s office. So last Friday that ruling was modified to try and grease the rails for the project one last time. How much grease will stick it’s too early to say, and there’s two reasons for that. The first is because the matter has now been remanded back to Judge Wissler. And the second is that within a few weeks, there will be new and we think very different leadership at DEC.
Now, on the ruling itself. The one decision we find truly appalling is the removal of Community Character as an issue for adjudication. That is simply a disgraceful assessment of the issues presented to the department since 2004, including the 1,200 people who showed up for public hearings with much to say about this. Equally indefensible is the dismissal of the need to assess Cumulative Impacts in conjunction with the planned expansion of Belleayre Mountain Ski Center, which we favor. But the agency’s rationale – that those plans haven’t been publicly released – is transparently false. Half the hamlet of Pine Hill has attended public meetings on that planned expansion. They liked DEC’s Powerpoint presentation and so did we. So for a Deputy Commissioner to pronounce that no such plans exist and therefore needn’t be factored in, that is simply unbelievable.
When a regulatory agency makes pronouncements any fool can see aren’t true, and uses them to justify withholding critical information from a public review process, someone’s not dealing from the top of the deck. By itself that’s no surprise, and New York Post State Editor Fred Dicker put it nicely last week, saying that Pataki was to public information what Jack Kevorkian was to medicine. Bottom line, we think Pataki’s last act before turning out the lights was the last time any state agency’s likely to pull a stunt like that.
And so the review and the SEQRA process will go on. So we hope, will the ongoing settlement discussions between the parties, soon to be joined by DEC leadership who view their role as upholders of our laws and process and protectors of the public interest. We think it’ll be a nice change. We think it’s what 72% of us statewide voted for in November.
BP