ALBANY - The Cuomo administration threatened today to shift nearly $50 million in state road projects within Seneca Nation territories to other communities unless the tribe quickly drops its demands for "exorbitant'' payments from Albany.
Worsening relations between the tribe and state was evident in two dueling media events: one called by the head of the state transportation department a few miles outside the tribe's Cattaraugus reservation to deliver the project cancelation threat and one later in the day by Seneca officials to declare the Cuomo administration's actions may be putting motorists at risk.
The Senecas urged federal transportation officials to step in and investigate the Cuomo administration's actions involving the use of federal road funding money for the stalled projects, including the interstate highway known as the Southern Tier Expressway.
"We're getting to the breaking point and the state's willing to jeopardize public safety to achieve political purposes," Seneca Nation President Robert Odawi Portersaid.
The Buffalo News reported earlier today of a plan by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to place into escrow $3.4 million to satisfy Seneca demands that the state pay a 3.5 percent fee and other amounts for state road work performed on its reservations. That, the state said, would clear the way for a couple projects, including work on a delayed, $29 million initiative to repave a 12-mile portion of the Southern Tier Expressway running through the Seneca Nation's Allegany reservation.
But Cuomo said the money would be taken as a "credit'' against the more than $400 million the tribe owes the state as part of a separate dispute with Albany involving revenue sharing payments from the nation's three Western New York casinos.
Today, Porter called the Cuomo administration's plan "idiotic."
"No thinking person would do it," Porter said, accusing the administration of trying to tangle up two totally different disagreements between the state and the tribe.
"The governor is trying to put the Seneca Nation on our backs because of the dispute over gambling money. Obviously, this linkage with gambling fees is too transparent," Porter said in an interview.
The Cuomo administration's transportation commissioner, Joan McDonald, traveled to the town of Evans, near the nation's Cattaraugus reservation, to declare $47 million in state road projects planned for Seneca Nation territories - including the Southern Tier Expressway repaving - would be reallocated to other road improvements in Western New York if the Seneca dispute is not settled quickly.
In an interview, McDonald said she is concerned the summer and fall road construction season is well underway. She said other alternative projects - ones "easier" to complete - are being identified. She did not put a timetable on the funding threat.
"It's unfortunate that it's at this point, but this is taxpayer dollars that could go to another project instead of going directly as a payment to the Senecas," McDonald said of the Seneca Nation's financial demands.
McDonald said the state has enjoyed "a very positive relationship" with the Senecas in past road projects, in which the state has paid the nation's "Tribal Employment Rights Ordinance," a two-decades-old tribal law requiring payments directly to the nation for state road projects on Seneca territory. The tribe uses some of the money to pay firms to monitor the state work.
But McDonald said the state didn't think it was appropriate to have to pay all the Seneca financial demands for the Southern Tier Expressway project for what amounts to routine maintenance. In the past, the state has made the payments for work done in "environmentally or culturally significant areas" of the reservations. She said the Senecas rebuffed an earlier offer this year to have the money go to a workforce training program for tribal members instead of to the tribe's general fund budget.
McDonald put the disputed money total at $1.7 million, half the level officials described a day earlier. She said the fees could come from the $400 million the tribe owes New York for skipped casino payments - from three gambling halls, the state noted, that have generated $4.65 billion in profits since opening over the past decade.
There are other projects in the pipeline, including an additional $40 million project for the same interstate and $16 million for a new bridge on Routes 5 and 20 over the Cattaraugus Creek south of Buffalo.
Porter said that bridge in the Cattaraugus reservation has been "grossly neglected" by the state and has become a safety concern that needs to be replaced now. He criticized McDonald for declining an offer by three Seneca council members to meet to discuss the dispute; McDonald said she put a call into Porter before her press conference but that he was unavailable.
At her news conference in Evans, McDonald was verbally confronted by Alan Pero, a leader of a local operating engineers union, for the state's role in delaying roadwork, which is affecting about 400 potential jobs for the Southern Tier Expressway project.
"My response is we are ready to move forward," McDonald said. But she said the administration believes $1.7 million should not be paid directly to the Seneca Nation's tribal government for the project. "We believe we're offering up a good compromise," she said.
But Porter said the state is showing its hand by threatening to transfer money for Seneca road projects to other areas.
"Rather than sit down and talk about the issue," the Seneca leader said, "they're making more threats."
