The Governor, the Seneca Nation and the Completely Rotten Highway

“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.”

This article originally appeared in

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The Governor, the Seneca Nation and the Completely Rotten Highway

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