Jesse McKinley

She came to Epstein’s New York City mansion on the Upper East Side for what she believed to be an interview with a wealthy client for a job as his traveling masseuse, she said. There was talk of lavish parties, exotic travel and educational opportunities.

With no one else in the room, Helm said, the man, whom she knew only as Jeffrey, asked for a foot rub. Once she began, she said, he moved his foot into her “intimate parts.” When she tried to leave, he grabbed and sexually assaulted her.

“Don't do anything I wouldn’t do,” she recalled him saying as she left.

Helm returned home to California, deeply disturbed by the experience. Embarrassed and scared, she did not call the police, and she did her best to banish the episode from her memory. It was only 17 years later, when she heard Epstein’s name while listening to a YouTube channel shortly after his arrest in July, that she began to realize who had assaulted her in 2002.

“I can’t even describe, it was beyond my heart sinking,” said Helm, now a 39-year-old mother of two living in Oakwood, Ohio. “It was something like a force. I was literally overtaken by horror.”

Helm is one of five women who sued Epstein’s estate in U.S. District Court in Manhattan last week, accusing him of rape, battery and false imprisonment and seeking unspecified damages.

But the lawsuits have another purpose: to build momentum for changing the statute of limitations in New York and elsewhere for civil claims stemming from sex crimes, which are under growing scrutiny across the United States.

According to Child USA, a nonprofit group that works to expand statutes of limitations, nearly two dozen states have changed their laws related to such rules this year. Many of the changes involved claims arising from allegations of childhood sexual abuse.

In New York state, the Child Victims Act expanded the statute of limitations for sex crimes against minors. For those abused as adults, the window is often shorter.

Legislators in New York now want to create a one-year window that would allow adults to revive old sex-crime accusations and bring them to court, mirroring a mechanism in the state’s child victims law. The proposed Adult Survivors Act, which was introduced in October and is supported by the Democratic majority leader of the state Senate, will be debated in next year’s legislative session.

New York state also recently changed the statute of limitations for some types of rape, expanding it to up to 20 years for both civil and criminal cases.

David Boies, the lawyer representing the five women who sued Epstein’s estate, said that the nature of sexual assault — and the shame it can engender — justified giving victims more time to bring their claims.

“These are people who are so traumatized, they bury it,” he said. “To apply a quote ‘normal’ statute of limitations to that sort of conduct doesn’t make any sense.”

A lawyer for Epstein’s estate, Bennet Moskowitz, did not respond to a request for comment. The estate notified the court last week that it was considering the creation of a financial program to resolve claims filed by women who say they were abused by Epstein.

Civil liberties lawyers argue that extending the statute of limitations for civil or criminal cases can put defendants at a great disadvantage: evidence can be lost or deteriorate, and memories can fade.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement this year that authorities needed to strike a balance between supporting “survivors while maintaining long-standing legal safeguards.”

“Statutes of limitations exist for an important reason,” Lieberman said. “As time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult for the accused to prepare a meaningful defense while evidence gets stale, witnesses disappear, and records become lost.”

The expansion of such statutes in New York has prompted legal challenges: Last week, a Catholic diocese on Long Island argued in a court filing in state Supreme Court that the Child Victims Act violated the constitutional guarantee of due process.

State Sen. Brad Hoylman, the lead sponsor of the Child Victims Act, said that he was gathering support for the Adult Survivors Act. That law, he said, would serve multiple purposes, including identifying serial perpetrators and giving victims a chance to tell their stories publicly.

“That’s largely what survivors are seeking,” Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat, said. “It tells the public you don’t have to take it anymore.”

The five women who sued Epstein’s estate last week include two sisters, Maria and Annie Farmer, who say that he abused them in the 1990s and have been outspoken about his behavior.

Annie Farmer said she was 16 when Epstein brought her to his New Mexico ranch, where he groped and harassed her, including crawling into bed with her and pressing his genitals against her. Maria Farmer said he assaulted her in Ohio on a separate occasion.

The sisters said the statute of limitations in some states was a barrier that prevented abuse victims from achieving justice. They cited a fear of reprisal from abusers, particularly when they were powerful men like Epstein.

“It can take years or even decades for victims of sexual traumas to understand and process what has happened,” said Annie Farmer, now 40 and working as a psychologist. “In my case and in many cases where perpetrators hold positions of power, there is also significant and often warranted fear of retribution that can make the risks of a lawsuit feel too great.”

Maria Farmer and the other three women who sued Epstein’s estate were adults when, they say, the abuse occurred. One, Juliette Bryant, was 20 and an aspiring model when Epstein flew her from her home in South Africa to the Virgin Islands, where he had a home. Once she was there, according to her lawsuit, he forced her into “extreme and repeated sexual abuse,” including multiple rapes.

Like Helm, Bryant said that it took 17 years from when the first incident occurred for her to come forward, and that she had only done so at the urging of two former boyfriends. She said that she was “terrified of Jeffrey Epstein and his machine.”

“The current laws do not recognize the trajectory of trauma and abuse,” said Bryant, now 37 and a businesswoman in Cape Town. “They need to change.”

Boies said he intended to test a clause in New York state law that allowed plaintiffs to file lawsuits within a year of the termination of a criminal case against a defendant. In Epstein’s case, the clock on such claims began Aug. 29, when federal prosecutors dismissed a sex-trafficking indictment against him after his suicide at the Manhattan Correctional Center.

For victims like Helm and her fellow plaintiffs, even the 20 years promised under the new state law seems too short.

“I can tell you what golden looks like: for the statute of limitations to be removed altogether,” she said. “I don’t understand the intention of setting a time limit. It’s essentially an expiration date, to the eyes of everyone. It’s like, ‘Oops: It’s not a thing anymore. It's not a crime.’”

This article originally appeared in

Why These 5 Accusers of Jeffrey Epstein Want More Than Money

By now, the contours of Teresa Helm’s account have become familiar. She was 22 when she met the man that she now knows was Jeffrey Epstein.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York responded to the announcement Monday that Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., was retiring by publishing a warm tribute to King on Twitter.

Such an across-the-aisle embrace has long been par for the course on occasions of retirement, death or other political farewells.

But in a hyperpartisan era in which ideology often trumps old-fashioned bonhomie, Schumer was rebuked by members of his own party for saying King “stood head &amp; shoulders above everyone else” and “fiercely loved America, Long Island, and his Irish heritage and left a lasting mark on all 3.”

“I will miss him in Congress &amp; value his friendship,” the senator concluded.

Many Twitter followers of Schumer, the highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, did not agree with the sentiments.

“Good grief,” read one of the more polite responses. “Have you lost your mind?”

Indeed, the tweet prompted more than 10,000 replies, mostly negative and some downright nasty. Videos of thumbs-downs, eye-rolling and heads shaking “no,” flooded into Schumer’s feed, as the word “resign” got tossed about.

Many of those outraged by Schumer’s praise pointed out King’s more controversial positions and statements, including when he said that there are “too many mosques” in America; that protesting NFL players are similar to Nazis; and that Eric Garner’s death was the result of his obesity and asthma, rather than the chokehold applied by a New York Police Department officer.

Add in King’s frequent support for President Donald Trump and his policies, and Schumer’s comments seemed even more galling — and divisive — to some on the left.

Another of King’s congressional colleagues, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — a Muslim American who has been the subject of Twitter fury — had a blunter take on his retirement announcement, noting his inflammatory statements about Islam and Garner.

Regardless of the criticism, Schumer did not delete the tweet despite some calls to do so.

“SERIOUSLY SCHUMER??,” Peter Daou, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, wrote about the tweet. He chastised Schumer for “fawning” over King and other Democratic leaders for “enabling” Republicans. “We need a new Democratic Party.”

The reaction to Schumer’s tweet was not completely unexpected, though some said it was overblown.

Brian Fallon, executive director of activist group Demand Justice and a former top aide to Schumer, noted that King had a deep local and middle-class appeal — he will have served more than a quarter-century when he retires — and that the senator had become “fond of him.”

“The two of them worked shoulder to shoulder in the years after 9/11 fighting to get Homeland Security funding for New York,” Fallon said. “Pete King would criticize his own party when Bush’s budgets would shortchange the grant amounts allotted for New York, and Schumer respected that about him.”

Angelo Roefaro, a spokesman for Schumer, said the senator and the representative “had many disagreements on many issues, especially on immigration, his attitude toward Muslims and women’s rights,” which manifested itself in efforts by the senator and other Democrats to defeat King last fall.

But, he added, “they’ve worked closely together on issues vital to New York, like delivering much-needed federal aid locally post 9/11, Superstorm Sandy and backing universal background checks legislation,” for guns.

After Schumer Praised Retiring Rep. King, Some Democrats Jeered

Maybe he just should have called.

But one district attorney race on the banks of Lake Ontario has become an unlikely big-money referendum on traditional law-and-order prosecutors, much like similar battles in Boston, Philadelphia and Queens, New York.

The race in Monroe County pits a Republican incumbent, Sandra Doorley, against an insurgent challenger, Shani Curry Mitchell, a progressive newcomer who has drawn the attention and backing of billionaire George Soros.

Since early October, Soros has spent more than $800,000 on ads supporting Mitchell through one of his political action committees, helping to bring visibility to a candidate pledging to stop “the overprosecution of the poor” and minority groups, and restore trust between law enforcement and communities in the county.

The outside spending benefiting Mitchell, who is running on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines, has drawn a fiery rebuke from Republicans and Doorley, who accused Soros of meddling and foul play.

“George Soros doesn’t know a damn thing about me,” Doorley said. “His New York PAC doesn’t know a damn thing about me.”

Just to the southwest of Rochester, another campaign — the only legislative race in New York this November — is operating on an entirely different economic model, as a 22-year-old, Austin Morgan, is attempting to ride last year’s Democratic momentum to pull off an upset in state Senate District 57.

Morgan, who began his candidacy last winter while still an undergraduate at Cornell University, is running a shoestring campaign: His most recent filing with the State Board of Elections showed he had exactly $3,819.07 on hand.

That’s enough to pay for gas in the 2012 Ford Escape that he drives around the district, a giant chunk of the state bordered by Pennsylvania and Lake Erie.

His campaign manager, Ravo Root, is a high school friend — “We were in band together,” Morgan said — who is still in college in Potsdam, New York, some 300 miles from the district.

The seat that Morgan is trying to win is a comfortably conservative one, most recently represented by the former Sen. Catharine Young, a Republican.

Young stepped down in March after failing to oust the minority leader, Sen. John J. Flanagan of Long Island, following the party’s devastating losses in 2018. Those losses flipped Albany’s upper chamber to Democratic control for only the third time in the past 50 years.

But Republicans are seemingly not taking the seat for granted; the Republican state Senate campaign has spent $90,000 to assist their candidate, George Borrello, something Morgan sees as a sign of nerves.

If Morgan were to win, it would be a resounding upset, and perhaps reflective of how the impeachment-related developments surrounding President Donald Trump have filtered down to local races. That possibility, Republicans say, is exceedingly dim.

“George Borrello is an extraordinary public servant and we are confident he will win resoundingly on Tuesday,” said Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Republican minority in the Senate.

The race in Monroe County, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans, may be a closer call. That Democratic advantage is also the case in Ulster County, in the Hudson Valley, where Soros’ PAC, the New York Justice and Public Safety Political Action Committee, has also put at least $184,000 behind David Clegg, a Democrat who is running against Michael J. Kavanagh, a Republican.

Indeed, the races in Monroe and Ulster are among the district attorney races that the Justice and Public Safety PAC has invested in, including support of the Working Families Party during Tiffany Cabán’s near miss earlier this year in Queens.

But that narrow loss did not douse Soros’ interest in local races; his PAC has contributed to five campaigns this election cycle, up and down the East Coast: In Virginia, the PAC has given $621,144.97 to the commonwealth’s attorney candidate Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, and $462,212.37 to the commonwealth’s attorney candidate Steve Descano. In Pennsylvania, the PAC has given $53,900 for research, polling and campaign literature to Friends of Jack Stollsteimer, another Democrat, in the Delaware County district attorney race.

Like Cabán, Mitchell has been running on a platform of criminal justice reform and more equitable prosecution, saying that too many low-level, nonviolent offenders are being put in prison in the county. And the money being spent on her behalf, she says, is a testament to that message.

“I think it’s because someone has dared to come out and run a campaign on change, on a platform that’s about seeking true justice and true safety, and that resonates,” said Mitchell, who worked under Doorley as a prosecutor in the Monroe office for several years. She added: “I had the guts to do it.”

Morgan’s pitch is decidedly more pragmatic, telling voters that they should elect a Democrat because that party is now in charge of both houses of the state Legislature and the governor’s mansion.

“Look, Cathy Young was in the majority and she delivered: That’s how she got it done,” Morgan said, sitting in his storefront campaign headquarters in Jamestown, New York. “With a Democratic majority, the only way we’re getting funding, or legislation or attention from Albany is from someone who is going to be in that Democratic caucus room.”

Indeed, Morgan is unstinting in his praise of Young; in accepting the nomination in March he called her “a titan of Albany,” and said he voted for her in 2018.

But he is unapologetic about his disdain for his opponent, Borrello, the Chautauqua County executive, accusing him of using “a great deal of vitriolic, divisive, hateful rhetoric in this campaign,” including calling Albany “the bowels of hell,” something Morgan says is an insult to the civil servants working there.

“They are beautiful hardworking good people,” he said. (Borrello said the remark was made in jest. “My opponent has nothing else to talk about,” he said, “so he has to make mountains out of molehills.”)

Morgan has a compelling personal biography: He grew up on 10 acres in the small rural town of Freedom, New York, in a “single-wide trailer on a dirt road.” His father is a mechanic and his mother is a teacher’s aide.

Last year, while still a student at Cornell, he interned in Albany with state Sen. Leroy Comrie of Queens, and discovered a niche in education and agricultural policy. While he praised Comrie as “the best example of a public servant I could think of,” Morgan is more conservative than most downstate Democrats, voicing support for gun rights, for instance, and questioning elements of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s signature gun-control law, the SAFE Act.

He admits he has an uphill battle — Young defeated her Democratic challenger in 2016 with 79% of the vote, and ran unopposed in 2018.

Borrello says he respects Morgan’s precocious pluck, but believes he would do a better job of cutting bipartisan deals in Albany’s often backroom bargaining sessions than the inexperienced Morgan.

“Without having a strong person in the role of state senator, so much of what we do locally is in jeopardy,” said Borrello, who was a businessman before entering public office.

Doorley, who was first elected as Democrat in 2011 before switching her party affiliation in 2015, said she did not vote for Trump in 2016, and called the Republicans “the party that I run on to be able to do my job,” saying district attorneys should be apolitical.

“I’m really running on my record and my relationship with the community,” she said, noting drops in both local jail population and overdose rates during her tenure, something she attributes to her office’s prosecution of heroin dealers in the county and prevention efforts.

The Soros connection to the race is undeniable, and one that the state Republican Party attacked, calling Soros “a radical liberal” who is “trying to infiltrate New York’s criminal justice system.”

Whitney Tymas, a senior adviser for the Justice and Public Safety PAC, said their efforts in New York and other states were nonpartisan and based solely on their interests in reforming the criminal justice system.

“What we’re really doing is leveling the playing field,” Tymas said, noting the inherent advantages of incumbency and often low voter engagement in district attorney races.

Doorley, who is the president-elect of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, said she rejected criticisms of her record, but acknowledged that the onslaught of advertisements for her opponent were a challenge.

“You know what I say to my D.A.s all over the country? No one’s safe,” she said. “You don’t know why, you don’t know where, but you could be the next target.”

Seeking Progressive Gains, Soros Donates to Local D.A. Campaigns

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — With much of the election energy focused on next year’s presidential election, most of the contests in New York state have stuck firmly to the all-the-politics-is-local playbook, hinging on issues like schools and crime.

On Wednesday, however, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared that New York is on track to meet its goal to end the AIDS epidemic in the state by 2020.

After decades of fearsome infection rates, the state in 2018 had just 2,481 new diagnoses of the virus that causes AIDS, a drop of 11% from the previous year, and 28% less than 2014, when the state began its initiative.

The governor’s three-pronged plan to combat AIDS is centered around identifying, tracking and treating people with HIV infection, including using pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, drugs that can drastically reduce the risk of contracting HIV through unprotected sex.

The governor said some 32,000 New Yorkers were now using PrEP, an increase of 32% since 2017.

“This new data shows we are on track to meet that goal and continue our historic progress to finally bend the curve on an epidemic that has taken too many lives for too long,” Cuomo said in a statement.

Experts in the field say that the progress being made in New York — particularly in New York City, long an epicenter of infection — is the result of a number of factors, including the use of PrEP and the ease of antiretroviral drugs, which suppress levels of HIV.

“Those two things together have been a revolution,” said Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington.

In particular, Kates said that the state and the city had embraced rapid initiation of antiretroviral treatment for those diagnosed with HIV, sometimes on the same day as a positive test result.

The new data from New York — where AIDS cases have been reported since 1981 — is striking when compared to the terrifying early days of the disease, when many otherwise healthy young gay men and others were stricken and died. State health officials say they believe they are on track to lower the number of new HIV diagnoses to a little more than 1,500 per year by 2020.

They are also seeking to get the estimated number of people infected every year — a term known as incidence — below the number of annual deaths, a metric that officials have said would signal an end of the epidemic.

At the same time that New York and cities like San Francisco have made major inroads in fighting AIDS, national health officials have been troubled by a leveling-off in HIV prevention efforts, including in some rural areas and southern states.

A February report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that rates of infection between 2010 and 2016 had remained stable among gay and bisexual men, who make up more than two-thirds of new infections, with a marked increase among Latino men.

New York City officials say the strides there have been remarkable: In 2000, AIDS-related illnesses were the third leading cause of premature mortality. In 2017, the disease had fallen to 10th on that list.

Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the continued declines in HIV infections was a result of a coordinated “data-driven, sex-positive approach.”

“It’s been part of our effort at chipping away at the stigma,” Barbot said, adding, “Not only are we seeing decreasing numbers of New Yorkers newly diagnosed with HIV, but they are living long and thriving lives.”

N.Y. Declares That the End of the AIDS Epidemic Is Near

ALBANY, N.Y. — There was a time when the diagnosis of HIV was a death sentence, when thousands of New Yorkers, primarily gay men, succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses, and the end of the epidemic seemed both medically and mentally impossible.

The highway is one of the worst around, with deep divots, cracked pavement and potholes the size of manhole covers. The speed limit plummets to 45 mph, and the blood pressures of most drivers soar.

But starting as early as Thursday, passengers on this road will see something they have rarely seen before: work crews, as New York and the Senecas, the state’s largest tribal nation, announced a truce Wednesday.

The deal ends five years of bickering over the deteriorated interstate, which brought criticism for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

The agreement will allow state road crews to completely overhaul the 3-mile stretch over the next three months. But it may also help repair the rotten relationship between the Senecas and the state, which have fought for decades over issues like cigarette taxes and highway tolls.

The latest dispute centers on the tribe’s casino revenues, including more than $250 million that arbitrators this year ruled the tribe owed. That decision has been contested by the Senecas, who own and operate three gleaming gambling halls on tribal lands in Western New York.

Through all of these issues runs a common thread: the Senecas’ claim of sovereignty. The stretch of Interstate 90 that crosses their land resulted in several confrontations with the state police during the 1990s. At one point, tribal protesters dropped burning tires off an overpass along the same stretch of road to show their displeasure at a planned state tax on cigarettes, long a lucrative business for the state’s tribes.

The deteriorating section of highway, part of the New York State Thruway system, has been blamed for blown tires and broken tie rods and all other manner of swerves and close calls. It prompted state Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican from Western New York, to call for an investigation by the Justice Department in August, saying that Cuomo was endangering public safety.

Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, has said that Reed was simply playing politics, and that he had feared sending state road crews onto the reservation and giving the Senecas an excuse not to pay the casino revenue.

On Wednesday, Cuomo said that getting the agreement with the Senecas had been challenging. “It was hard to get there,” he said in a radio interview on WAMC.

For his part, Reed said on Facebook that he was pleased with the agreement and had been “happy to lead the public outcry over the road conditions.”

As news reports about the road continued to percolate, the tribe and the state came back to the table this month, culminating with “several days of direct communication,” according to the tribe’s president, Rickey Armstrong Sr.

Armstrong had insisted last week that Thruway Authority officials needed to “address the many transportation-related issues that exist on Seneca territory in a comprehensive way,” and in a statement Wednesday he said he was still holding out hope for a broader deal.

Matthew J. Driscoll, the executive director of the Thruway Authority, said he hoped the repairs would be done before the winter, when Lake Erie winds and lake-effect snow can make life miserable on even the best of byways.

The deal was hailed by local leaders who have fielded complaints from residents.

George M. Borrello, the Chautauqua County executive who lives near the no-good, terrible, very bad highway, said he was thrilled that he — and his car — would soon be safer on the roads.

“I’m happy I will no longer be playing Russian roulette every time I get on that horrific stretch,” he said.

$250 Million Feud Lingers, but Senecas and N.Y. Reach Small Truce

For years, motorists flying down Interstate 90 southwest of Buffalo, New York, were putting the well-being of their vehicles — not to mention their occupants — at risk, as they entered a 3-mile stretch crossing the Seneca Nation’s tribal lands.

The highway, Interstate 90, is so deteriorated that federal authorities have issued warnings and local drivers have blown tires and tie rods.

“When one of those empty tractor-trailers goes over it, you hear it: boom, boom, boom!” said Al Schindler, 69, who lives adjacent to the interstate. “It bounces all the way down.”

As motorists approach, the speed limit falls like a jagged cliff, from 65 mph to 55 to 45. The last drop-off is accompanied by a caution sign advising “rough road.”

Everyone agrees that the highway, which is part of the New York Thruway system but within the tribal lands of the Seneca Nation, needs to be repaired. But the reason for the lack of new asphalt is considerably more complicated, touching on decades-old grievances between the state and the Senecas; accusations of bad faith on both sides; and a legal battle over casino revenue.

Because the section of the Thruway in question is on Seneca land, the tribe must give permission to the state before it can do any work. That permission has not been given, and the state and Seneca leaders blame each other for the impasse.

“All you have to do is grant us permission and let us fix this stretch of road,” said Matthew J. Driscoll, executive director of the Thruway Authority, wrote in a letter sent Sunday to the Senecas. “Just like we fix the other 500 miles of the Thruway.”

Driscoll complained that “multiple attempts to secure this permission” have been met with “silence or outright rejection by your Nation’s leadership.”

But Rickey Armstrong Sr., the Seneca Nation president, insisted that the tribe must first sit down with Thruway Authority officials to “address the many transportation-related issues that exist on Seneca Territory in a comprehensive way.” He accused the state of backing out of previously scheduled meetings.

“The Nation remains ready to have that dialogue,” he said.

State officials say they have considered repairing the roadway without the Senecas’ permission, using state police for security, but they fear antagonizing the Seneca Nation as well as other state tribes.

The road’s condition has prompted U.S. Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican from Western New York, to call for an investigation by the Justice Department. The congressman has accused Cuomo of endangering public safety.

“It’s like going on a dirt road at 65 mph,” Reed said, likening the highway to a minefield. “It’s mind-boggling.”

Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, characterized Reed’s comments as political gamesmanship.

“Shocker that the Republican administration wants to use U.S. attorneys to do political investigations,” Cuomo said in a radio interview on WAMC.

The highway has long been a flashpoint for battles between New York and the Seneca Nation, the so-called Keeper of the Western Door, whose sovereign territories are spread out over five noncontiguous reservations running from Niagara Falls to the Pennsylvania border.

In 1992, tribal protesters, furious at a planned state tax on Indian cigarettes and gasoline, dropped burning tires off an overpass along the same stretch of road, resulting in arrests and several injured state troopers. In 1997, the highway was also briefly blocked during another Seneca protest over taxes.

In 2011, the conflict reignited, with the tribe claiming that the state had pressured it into accepting a one-time payment of $75,000 in 1954 to build the Thruway across its territory. The Senecas demanded the state pay it tens of millions of dollars in what it called back payments — tolls, essentially — for cars driving across the reservation.

That claim is now memorialized on the Thruway: Next to the “rough road” sign, the tribe erected a “Welcome to the Seneca Nation” sign that asserts that the state owes the Senecas more than $675 million, or $1 per every car the tribe estimates has traveled through there.

Last year, the tribe sued the state in federal court in Buffalo, claiming that New York had illegally built the Thruway on its land and calling it “an affront to the Nation’s basic sovereignty and territorial integrity.” That case is still pending.

The state’s relationship with the Senecas has also suffered because of the dispute over the Nation’s casino revenue; in March 2017, the Senecas stopped paying the state a portion of their casino revenue, arguing that they had fulfilled their obligations under a 2002 compact that gave them the exclusive right to open casinos in Western New York.

State officials believe the Senecas now owe more than $250 million in proceeds from gambling revenue. This year, arbitrators ruled against the tribe, but the Senecas have continued to press their case in federal court as well as with the Department of Interior, which oversees tribal issues.

Cuomo said that he would be wary of pushing the state to unilaterally fix the highway, warning that it could affect its dispute regarding the gambling revenue because the tribe might try to link the two issues.

“I don’t want to give them a reason to say New York breached the agreement by coming onto I-90 when they had no right to come onto I-90,” the governor said to reporters last month.

The same 3-mile stretch of highway also figured in a dispute involving federally mandated bridge inspection work and debris removal. State officials complained that it took two years of failed negotiations and, ultimately, intervention from federal highway officials before a highway bridge on Seneca land could be inspected.

Seneca leaders contended that the Federal Highway Administration’s involvement came only after they requested it; they also asserted that they had offered to conduct the overdue bridge inspections, using a certified highway inspection consulting firm, but that the state rejected the offer.

Interstate 90 is the main corridor between Buffalo and Cleveland, leading toward the Pennsylvania border to the south, as well as the main route toward New York City and Boston. Tractor-trailers regularly rocket down the highway, which also offers access to the vacation homes along Lake Erie’s shore.

The last significant repaving work on the highway was at least five years ago, local officials said, though there have been some patchwork repairs. Since then, traffic and the area’s famously harsh winters have worn down the road to the point that gravel and small stones are visible in its eroded surface. Inches-deep ruts are common, as are potholes and fissures running parallel to faded white lines between the lanes.

In the meantime, residents and officials in communities near the road have been clamoring for some sort of solution.

George M. Borrello, the Chautauqua County executive who lives in Irving, New York, a beachside town adjacent to the reservation, said that although the relationship between his community and the Senecas had long been cordial and friendly, he said he and other residents felt like “collateral damage” in the dispute between the state and the tribe.

“The bottom line is, it’s the Thruway — people pay to use it,” said Borrello, a Republican who is running for state Senate. “They should put politics aside and fix the road.”

The Governor, the Seneca Nation and the Completely Rotten Highway

CATTARAUGUS INDIAN RESERVATION, N.Y. — If ever you wanted a tangible symbol of the execrable relationship between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York’s largest Native American tribe, it is the 3 miles of cracked, rutted and completely rotten highway running through this lakeside reservation.

But Resorts World Catskills, roughly 85 miles northwest of New York City, has lost money every quarter since it opened in February 2018, dragged into the red by a combination of underwhelming attendance and nine-figure loans.

Last month, the largest stockholder of Empire Resorts, the company that operates the casino, argued that it should go private because it no longer believed it had “any reasonable prospect for becoming financially self-sustaining in the future.”

The company’s most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed a $36 million loss in the second quarter of 2019, after a $37 million loss in the first three months. The company warned that it may seek bankruptcy protection if it does not secure financing.

Things had gotten so bad that Empire Resorts successfully petitioned the New York state Gaming Commission to reduce the number of slot machines required on its gaming floors, a move that would artificially increase the casino’s win per unit — a key barometer for casinos.

But Resorts World Catskills is far from alone in feeling the pain: All four of the state’s newest casinos have underperformed expectations, swamped by competition in an already-saturated gaming market.

The same challenge has faced casinos across the country, as states attracted to the promise of tax revenues and jobs have engaged in a kind of brinkmanship that divides already-served markets into smaller and smaller pieces.

“In the early days, it was build it and they will come, and that worked for a long time,” said Alan Woinski, a gambling industry analyst and consultant. “That was great when you only had a casino in every other state. Now it’s like a war.”

By the time New York opened its first full-fledged casinos, the state already had five tribal casinos and more than a half-dozen so-called racinos, which offer slotslike video lottery terminals at racetracks.

“None of this is a shock,” said Harold L. Vogel, a longtime gambling industry analyst. “We know that there are so many states that have legalized different forms of gambling. And New York state, in particular, was late to the game.”

New York has also been slow to embrace sports wagering; although casinos are allowed to take sports wagers, the state has not authorized mobile betting — a method that has helped propel New Jersey past Nevada in sports betting handle.

Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, has repeatedly defended the gaming expansion as a no-cost-to-the-state way to provide much-needed jobs, both in construction and the facilities themselves.

Those promises have largely held true, with significant caveats: The construction jobs were temporary, and many casino jobs are low paying, with dealers making a statewide mean salary of about $35,000 a year, according to the State Labor Department.

“We did the casinos in upstate New York, not because it was the greatest industry in the world, but because upstate New York’s economy’s been suffering for decades,” Cuomo said in a radio interview last month. “The casinos have brought thousands and thousands of jobs to upstate New York and invested billions of dollars.”

State officials have talked about the millions poured into state and local tax coffers as a result of the expansion, in addition to $171 million in license fees paid by the four new casinos. The casinos pay a tax of anywhere from 37% to 45% on slots revenue, as well as 10% on revenue from table games like craps and roulette.

The state’s seven tribal casinos — including the Turning Stone casino east of Syracuse, run by the Oneida Nation — pay lower rates, and the owners of the new casinos have actively lobbied lawmakers to lower their own rates. That inequity has been particularly vexing for casinos in Western New York, where the Seneca tribe has been in a protracted legal dispute with the state and has refused to pay any revenue for more than two years.

Greg Carlin, the chief executive of Rush Street, which operates the Rivers Casino in Schenectady, New York, said its “revenue is below what we originally expected and our costs are higher, and we didn’t appreciate the impact that different slot rates would have on our business.”

He added that Rivers, which opened in early 2017, “has been a success from a community standpoint and a New York standpoint” — pouring millions into Schenectady and neighboring counties. “But it has not been a success from an ownership or an investment standpoint.”

Competition also continues to increase, both in terms of locations and options for gaming. In late June, a $2.6 billion casino opened in Boston, and last August, MGM opened a casino in Springfield, Massachusetts, just 60 miles from New York’s eastern border.

In response, the casinos have embarked on a variety of efforts to try to survive, including a little-noticed legislative deal to allow Resorts World to build a video-machine gaming hall in Orange County, a heavily populated New York City suburb. At the same time, Resorts World closed its racino at Monticello Raceway, where business had plummeted since the Catskills casino opened.

Casino officials are still hopeful that mobile sports wagering will be permitted in New York; some state lawmakers suggest that it will be a top priority in January, when the next legislative session starts.

“We are very optimistic,” said state Sen. Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., D-Queens, who chairs the Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee.

And then there remains the potential grand prize: a casino in New York City.

Owners of racinos at Aqueduct Racetrack and Yonkers Raceway suggest that they could quickly transform their operations into full-fledged casinos; if a competing casino were allowed to open nearby, their business would presumably suffer.

Proponents of a city casino were encouraged in late June when the state Gaming Commission announced that it would pay for an independent study of the casino industry in the state, including the potential market for up to three additional casinos in the New York City area. Such an expansion was not scheduled until at least 2023, but state lawmakers seem eager to accelerate the timetable. The study is due by the end of the year.

Colin Mansfield, a gaming analyst with Fitch Ratings, said many analysts doubted whether the upstate casinos would ever be successful, in part because of where they were built — none near a major, million-plus population center — and the demographics of many gamblers in those regions.

“Building new supply in an already competitive market makes it pretty difficult to generate any sort of meaningful performance,” he said. “You look at the size of the properties, and even the smaller ones are struggling.”

Earlier this month, Kien Huat Realty, which owns most of Empire Resorts, announced that it would partner with Genting Malaysia, which owns the Aqueduct racino, and seek to buy out existing stockholders at $9.74 per share; the stock is currently trading at around $8.20.

Genting officials said in a filing Thursday that their offer was “the best alternative available to Empire’s stockholders,” and would allow the Catskills casino to benefit from a combined marketing approach and allow the company “to compete more effectively in northeastern U.S. region’s current competitive gaming landscape.”

Woinski, who has studied the gaming industry since the early 1990s, said casinos in the United States tended to perform better when they were on the peripheries of cities.

In those spots, he said, they tended to be accessible to a huge number of would-be gamblers who would not have the same entertainment options as people in city centers.

“When you’re in a big city, there are so many other things to do that casinos are an afterthought,” he said.

Monticello does not have that problem; its downtown shows little evidence of an economic benefit, with empty storefronts pocking its main drag. Inside the casino on a recent Friday night, many of the baccarat tables were empty, while poker, craps and blackjack all were doing steady business. Some visitors, however, had simply come to enjoy karaoke at one of the facility’s bars and not really gamble.

One of those was Ronnie Dimmie, a school bus driver from Washingtonville, New York, about 40 miles east, who performed a version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” She said she had come to hang out with friends, but would not risk more than $20 gambling.

“We’re having a great time,” she said. “But gambling, staying up all night? Those days are over.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/nyregion/casinos-ny-gambling-catskills.html" id="2c52cb1b-a6be-3102-a7fc-9d8e9b2649ba">The New York Times</a>.

Why a $1.2 Billion Gambling Mecca Has Fallen on Hard Times

MONTICELLO, N.Y. — It was once thought to be a sure thing, a $1.2 billion gambling mecca that carried long-held hopes of revitalizing the Catskills, and more recent expectations of driving Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s upstate development program.

But they do agree on one thing: Democratic leaders in New York are out to eliminate them.

In separate, but parallel, lawsuits filed Monday, the two parties have accused Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other top Democratic officials of effectively conspiring to try to get rid of them via a leave-no-evidence manner familiar to Albany: through the creation of a special commission.

One of the commission’s primary tasks will be to examine the state’s practice of fusion voting, the electoral oddity whereby candidates in New York are able to run and collect votes on multiple party lines, sometimes representing wildly divergent political philosophies.

Most states do not allow such crossover, but supporters of fusion voting in New York say it allows for more political ideas to percolate, as major party candidates seek their party endorsements.

The calculus and stakes for such small parties are plain: Any group that gets 50,000 votes in an election for governor is guaranteed a ballot line for the next four years. Any group that does not is banished from the ballot, effectively ending any influence it might hold, and — in some cases — the third party itself.

The legal action also comes with a subplot, pitting the state Democratic Party — which is effectively led by Cuomo, now in his third term — against the Working Families Party, a progressive-backed group that supported Cuomo’s opponent, Cynthia Nixon, in last year’s Democratic primary. (In an example of fusion voting, the party gave Cuomo its line in the general election, where he collected more than 100,000 votes.)

ALBANY, N.Y, — One would be hard-pressed to find two political parties that agree on less than the liberal Working Families Party and the Conservative Party of New York, which occupy opposite ends of New York’s political spectrum.

Jesse McKinley

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