50 YEARS AGO
Former governor Dewey dies
Thomas E. Dewey, whose political career included three terms as Republican governor of New York and twice carried him to the shadow of the White House, died at 68 in Florida of a heart attack in his hotel room. Born in Michigan, he was a 1923 graduate of the University of Michigan. He studied at Columbia Law School before deciding on a legal rather than a musical career. He had met his wife, the former Frances Eileen Hutt of Texas, while both were singing. She died in 1970.
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, praised Dewey as an “outstanding leader of his generation.”
Saying the survival of the local harness horse racing industry is on the line, Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner called on Rivers Casino & Resort to make its overdue purse payments to the Saratoga Harness Horsepersons Association (SHHA).
In a press conference on Tuesday at the Saratoga Casino Hotel, she also urged Gov. Andrew Cuomo to eliminate plans to allow the Schenectady casino to defer its obligatory payment until six months after the pandemic restrictions are lifted. “I have deep concerns that what has been proposed in the governor’s budget, what has been termed a sweetheart deal for Rivers Casino, would in fact make all of this impossible,” Woerner said.
Woerner, D-round Lake, said the 2022 budget plan would render the SHHA, with its 700 horse owners and trainers, inoperable and “there would no longer be harness racing in Saratoga Springs.”
Throughout the pandemic, Saratoga’s harness racing and the small businesses that support it have struggled with increased costs and decreased income.
Woerner explained that both the casino and the harness track were closed for months during the pandemic and that SHHA doesn’t expect the full payment, which could amount to millions of dollars. However, she said she and SHHA did expect Rivers to come to the table in good faith and negotiate a reasonable outcome for both. She also said that the Schenectady casino has not paid its purse support payments since the beginning of 2020 — two and a half months before the pandemic shut down Rivers and businesses across the state.
A statement from Rivers offered a different view of the situation.
“The gaming statute never intended to place a struggling Rivers Casino on the hook to make up revenue declines at Saratoga Casino and Raceway caused by an unforeseen catastrophe like the COVID -19 pandemic, or a lack of performance at Saratoga,” the statement read. “The budget proposal eliminates the windfall to Saratoga Casino and Raceway.”
Woerner disagreed. “This is a big casino. This is a wealthy corporation,” Woerner said. “Rush Street Gaming, which is the parent company for Rivers Casino, last year did a public offering. They are sitting on a quarter of a billion dollars of cash — clearly enough to both operate their casino and meet their obligations. This is about what’s fair.”
A Skidmore College faculty member and a recent Skidmore graduate have collaborated with 28 scientists internationally on a study suggesting that the Amazon rainforest is likely having a net warming effect on global climate.
Lead author Kris Covey, visiting assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences, and 2020 graduate Zoe Pagliaro have co-authored the study “Carbon and Beyond: The biogeochemistry of climate in a rapidly changing Amazon,” which was published March 11 in “Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.”
Their paper resulted from a July 2019 visit to Manaus, Brazil, where Covey and Pagliaro attended the National Geographic Society’s convention of 30 scientists. Pagliaro was the only undergraduate student to attend, and played a key role in compiling into a single table the majority of studies that have explored forest biophysical climate feedbacks in the Amazon over the past 10 years.
The table was used to for discussions among the scientists for a first-of-itskind assessment of the Amazon rainforest’s cumulative climate impact.
The study is considered the most comprehensive assessment to date of human and natural causes that contribute to the Amazon’s complex interactions with climate.