Backyard bingo

In using the scattergun approach on Passamaquoddy Tribe’s bingo parlor, the Albany Township opposition has sprayed a lot of objections around but so far has failed to shoot anything of substance — except its own foot.

First, it was the pristine natural environment argument, the deleterious impact the bingo hall’s belching smokestacks would have upon the Bethel region’s old growth ski resorts, condo developments and microbreweries.

Then it was Creeping Sin Syndrome. Let tour buses packed with those notorious bingo hounds roll through town 27 weekends a year and it’s next stop, Sodom. With connecting service to Gomorrah.

Not to mention the project’s impact upon public safety resources, what with local law enforcement forever having to break up those all-too-frequent bingo riots. Oxford County Sheriff Lloyd Herrick, who says he won’t spend “one red nickel” of his taxpayers’s money protecting the hall, probably isn’t a racist, as charged, but he sure knows how to mangle a cliche.

And, of course, no intervenor with a a shred of self-esteem could let a project pass by without asserting a right to pry into the financial lives of the principals. News flash: the application is being reviewed by the Land Use Regulation Commission, not the IRS.

But the latest argument is the corker, the old blood-is-thicker-than-anything routine. It seems LURC Commissioner Theresa Hoffman is a Penobscot Indian who lives off-reservation but who works as a consultant to her tribe on land issues. Penobscot Gov. Francis Mitchell, who holds no more sway over LURC than any other citizen, wrote a friendly letter of support to Indian Township Passamaquoddy Gov. John Stevens.

In the apparent belief that, in matters of logic, the shortest distance between points A and B is a straight line through C,D, and E, opponents say Hoffman should recuse herself from voting on the project because she occasionally works for a man of shared heritage who does not object to it. Opponents have yet to ask how the employers of the other LURC commissioners feel about high-stakes bingo and whether there are any ethnic ties, i.e. mutual Irish grandmothers, that could skew the process. Might be nobody gets to vote.

The big question is whether the tribe needs state review at all since the hall is to be built on federal Indian trust land, with the approval of the pertinent federal agencies. The Passamaquoddys have agreed to undergo LURC review under protest, a position that makes sense if the word “sovereignty” still has any meaning.

Throwing up a barrage and hoping a ricochet inflicts a mortal wound is the classic NIMBY tactic. Problem is, everyone knows who the rightful owner of this particular backyard is. LURC should reject the specious arguments and let them play a little bingo.