Fearing a plea for tax breaks from New York State‘s three new, underperforming casinos, Assemblyman Gary Pretlow (D) has asked the state auditor to look into why they failed to meet their 
revenue projections. “It is critically important that we have reliable and realistic long-term revenue projections — so we can prevent the recent gaming expansion from creating an arms race for more and more tax subsidies,” wrote Pretlow. The trio of casinos — Tioga Downs, Del Lago and Rivers Casino Schenectady — are on pace to come up $222 million short.
New York Gaming Commissioner Lee Park has asked the casinos to give him their Year Three revenue projections, in hopes that will produce a more-realistic scenario. “Solely comparing the casino applicants’ snapshot projections from 2014 to the actual millions of dollars in private revenue generated over the past 10 months (from facilities that are only partially complete) is not the best metric to gauge the overall success or viability of the new casinos,” Park cautioned.
“From many aspects, del Lago Resort & Casino has been a wonderful success story in less than nine months. While our 
revenue in the first eight months has been below projections, we are confident that we are moving in the right direction,” rationalized General Manager Jeff Babinski. Tioga Downs owner Jeff Gural offered a similar glass-half-full perspective: “The projections we had were wrong. The truth is, from an economic development standpoint, it’s been a huge success.” He’s pinning his hopes on the addition of a hotel to the racino.
Earlier, Pretlow had sounded a prophetic note when the underwhelming numbers started rolling in. “I figured as much … I always thought that we were oversaturating the central part of the state.” Fortunately, some local governments (unlike the 
casinos) lowballed their revenue projects and aren’t going to find themselves out on a limb. Continuing his predictive streak, Pretlow said “they’ll downsize and reconfigure their operations, and they’ll be successful. Not on the scale that they expected to be, but they’ll still be profitable … My prediction is they’ll be coming back and asking for tax break to take money out of education again,” Pretlow said, “and I’m going to have to fight it. Because it’s not right.” Now that we know Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) drank the Kool-Aid, there will be an era of diminished expectations, hopefully realistic ones.
At any rate, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli gets to say ‘I told you so’: “Given the experience in other states, where casino revenues have been lower than expected, the state will need to use caution in projecting new revenues and any expenditures based on such resources.”
* All the effort expended to open a satellite tribal casino in East Windsor could go for naught if Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke doesn’t give it his blessing within the next 45 days. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has sat on the fence, neither approving 
the Foxwoods/Mohegan Sun joint venture nor kiboshing it. MGM Resorts International would like to stall or block outright the East Windsor casino, regardless of whether it gets to build in Bridgeport or not.
“IGRA further requires that if the Secretary neither approves nor disapproves a compact,” write tribal lawyers, “it is deemed approved to the extent it is consistent with IGRA 45 days after its submission to the Secretary.” However, casino approval — even by inaction — hasn’t been gazetted, preventing it from taking action (a sort of pocket veto). A Zinke spokesperson said cryptically that federal action is unnecessary. If the satellite casino is nixed by the BIA, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (D) says the tribes are on their own — the state’s not going to pick up the tab for litigation.
