Quote:
Legislation designed to set a hard deadline for the casino licensing process in New York has been passed by both the Senate and the Assembly and will be sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul for approval.
State senators approved SB 9673 on June 7 by a 51-4 vote and the Assembly green-lit it 51-9. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Joe Addabbo, would establish a deadline for selecting the three casino sites in downstate New York. The New York legislature had been set to adjourn on June 6 but stayed past that cut-off to vote on the bill.
Things could theoretically progress significantly faster than the March 2026 deadline, as SB9673 allows interested developers to apply for casino licenses while still in the process of resolving land use issues. Under the amended bill, applications are due Aug. 31 of this year.
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All for nothing. The governor is going to sit on this, and now applications won't be due until a year from now.
The governor
could have had the Board approve the new, state approved timeline. But no. She's enjoying her new identity as "the stopper". Things that have been moving along, suddenly come to a halt. You say there's an airtrain to Queens coming? Not so fast. She'll need time to study it, and other alternatives. The final result? You'll get nothing, and like it. You say there's a development plan centered around Penn Station with massive office towers, no less? No worries. The stopper will cut the towers down to size a bit, and let's just announce we'll move forward without all of that anyway. There must be some other way to pay for it. You say there's this congestion pricing plan that will pump money into the state to help pay for transit improvements? Not so fast. The stopper will have none of that, thank you. Well, what about Sike K, an empty plot of state owned land that developers are just waiting to build on? What's that? An Affirmation Tower you say? Nonsense. The Javits Center needs more residents across the street. Let's just tear everyting up, and issue a new RFP. Nearly a year later? Nothing. Not a peep.
So what about these casino bids? Developers and Casino operators are just dying to give the state much needed dollars. And the state really could use the money. But no rush. The stopper has no use for such funding. I tell you, had Cuomo still been in office, all of these things would be underway, with more coming. I just don't get the point of all this stoppage and delay.