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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.