Seneca County Board Chairman Robert Hayssen didn’t pull his punches when he attacked a New York lawmaker over a new casino proposed for the area. Hayssen said Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente is “like Saddam Hussein in his rat hole when they captured him.” Picente opposes the plan to build a 5 casino in Tyre, 80 miles west of the Oneida Nation’s Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, reported the Utica Observer Dispatch.
Not content with comparing his fellow public servant to the Butcher of Baghdad, Hayssen also took on Oneida Nation spokesman Ray Halbritter. “Halbritter and Picente are in a rat hole together,” he jeered. “And they’re scared we might take 10 percent of their casino profits.”
Picente said he was disappointed by Hayssen’s “disgusting and disparaging language,” and pointed out that a casino in Tyre would circumvent the Oneidas’ exclusivity agreement with the state. Tyre is just outside the tribe’s nine-county gaming exclusivity zone.
“I have no trouble with a casino in the Southern Tier,” said Picente, “but putting it there violates the spirit of the law.”
A statement from the Oneidas said any gaming expansion in the immediate area would “simply shift jobs from one region to another, rather than growing the region’s job base.”
Hayssen didn’t back down, though he used less colorful language in his response. “Picente and Halbritter know we have the best model for our casino in our zone, and it will rival theirs someday,” he said. “They just don’t want it to happen.”
Rochester-based developer Wilmorite and its partner Peninsula Pacific are behind the casino project, called Lago Resort and Casino. Promoters say it could draw 50 percent of its traffic from existing Indian casinos, including Turning Stone and the three Seneca Nation casinos in Niagara Falls, Buffalo and Salamanca, the Observer-Dispatch reported.
Hayssen previously said his “friends” in Oneida County “have apparently been drinking heavy doses of Turning Stone Kool-Aid.”
