Day after day, week after week, the discussions and diatribes continue unabated regarding the Western Mohegan Indians and their hopes for state-recognition as a tribe, and their goal of building a casino in Greenfield Park.

We talked to Chief Ronald Roberts in an effort to pin down some information from this highly controversial and somewhat elusive figure — he's told us on several occasions that he simply does not talk to newspapers because of his negative experiences in the past. So we figured that bringing you his side of his oft-reported-on saga would be both informative and of interest to our reading public.

We ran a survey gauging public opinion on the casino. Unfortunately, the day the survey first hit the stands, the Town of Wawarsing board decided to vote 'yes' on the town's resolution of support — reversing an earlier 'no' vote — without any measure of their constituents feelings on the matter.

At that point, we figured 'case closed,' right?

Wrong.

Since that time, it's all anybody's been able to talk about, from impromptu oratories from the pulpit at the Village of Ellenville board meeting, to yet more confusion from the town board that same night. The town board was in such a tizzy about the resolution they'd approved two weeks before that they came close to holding an illegal meeting to hold yet another vote on the resolution to, it would seem, rescind the resolution.

The funny thing is that before the village and town resolutions on the subject were first brought up, both Village Mayor Jeff Kaplan and Town Supervisor Ed Jennings said, to paraphrase, "this thing will probably not even happen." And, indeed, if accounts from the Assistant Counsel for the Governor, David Rose, are anything to go by, no other tribe in New York State has even attempted to establish a casino without the Federal Government's Bureau of Indian Affairs approval…so what's all the fuss about?

The town board is wasting their time deciding issues about which they have no qualifications to judge, and which will have no effect on the town since no one truly believes the casino will ever actually materialize. It's one thing to discuss and consider resolutions about Wal-Mart — a very real possibility in Wawarsing — but quite another to devote energy and time to something most doubt is at all in the realm of possibility.

At best, the recent re-votes, reversals, and disorganized hastiness point only to a lack of basic competence in how to run a municipality. At worst, we see a town board completely in the thrall of any business interest that walks in the door at Town Hall, twisting and turning in whatever direction those interests order them to face. We'd like to believe that's not the case; even so, the alternative explanations for these antics are equally unflattering.

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