SALAMANCA — Kevin Burleson started as a reporter at The Salamanca Press in February 1987 — about four years before the 99-year Salamanca Indian Lease was due to expire.
However, the newspaper had been writing about the lease for years.
“In those days, we had a lease countdown on the front page every day,” Burleson recalled in a recent interview. He later became managing editor of the then-daily newspaper before being appointed Democratic election commissioner by the Cattaraugus County Legislature in 2004.
The lease was due to expire Feb. 19, 1992, but on May 21, 1990, the new lease was signed by Salamanca Mayor Anthony Carbone and Seneca Nation of Indians President Calvin Lay. It raised the individual lease payments from $57,000 a year to $800,000 a year. Some homeowners had paid $1 or $2 a year in lease payments.
Included were state payments to the Seneca Nation of $25 million and $35 million from the federal government.
The city was split into two camps: Concerned Citizens, eager for everything to return to normal and advocating for the new lease; and a group opposed to the lease, the Salamanca Coalition of United Taxpayers (SCOUT).
“I tried to balance coverage between city government, the Senecas, Rep. Amo Houghton and SCOUT,” Burleson said. “No matter what happened, it was hard to keep the story balanced. We weren’t going to cover the first SCOUT meeting, but I went anyway. I felt as a newspaper, we had to cover it.”
Others felt the private group of anti-lease people had racist undertones.
Between 400 and 500 SCOUT supporters would gather for monthly updates at what is now the Ray Evans Seneca Theater, Burleson recalled.
“It seemed like there was something in the paper about the lease every day,” he said. “We were sorting it all out.”
Burleson said covering what was arguably the biggest story in the newspaper’s long history “was a tremendous responsibility.” The story took him to Congress for lease hearings and to federal court in Buffalo, where the new lease was challenged by SCOUT supporters.
In Washington, Burleson recalls, he wrote his story on a computer in the Capitol Hill office of Houghton.
Senate hearings chaired by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, included testimony from several city officials, including Carbone, David Franz and Patrick Callaghan, Burleson said. Pat Cleveland spoke against it.
“The day the lease expired in February 1992, I was accused of being biased by all three sides — the Senecas, the SCOUTS who were opposed to the lease and by the Concerned Citizens group and city officials who supported the lease,” Burleson said. “One Seneca protester called me the ‘SCOUT press boy,’ the city officials were upset with the news coverage and the news hole we gave to the SCOUT group and the SCOUTs said I supported the lease,” Burleson said.
“You were literally walking a tightrope every day to try and provide a balanced and accurate account of the news — and the news didn’t occur in a balanced fashion. One day the news way bad and the next day it was good — depending on your point of view.”
One behind-the-scenes role journalists played was relaying concerns from each side to the other and to Washington, Burleson noted.
“There was a hang-up over whether the city council should vote first to accept the lease or whether the Nation’s tribal council should vote first to support the lease offer,” he said. “Neither side wanted to act first. After relaying that hang-up to Houghton’s office, his staff pressured the city government to act first.”
Burleson said The Salamanca Press received a lot of attention from outside news agencies, including Buffalo television stations who brought cameras into the pressroom and took video of the papers coming off the press with the headline announcing the new lease deal.
“We delayed our deadline by more than an hour to get that news out the same day. I met and was interviewed by reporters from the New York Times, the St. Petersburg Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail and many other state newspapers and press agencies throughout the process,” he said.
“It was hard sometimes getting information and the details out of city officials who were gun-shy from the challenges of the community,” he added. “It was also much harder after the federal court challenge was filed by the SCOUT group. The Seneca sovereign government didn’t allow non-Senecas to attend their government meetings, so we relied on several sources, including some enrolled Senecas who attended the session for background. We received threats and numerous angry phone calls.”
“It might not have been the headline in the story that upset people. It was more likely the paragraph at the 23rd inch that tried to give background to the history of the process that angered people. Every word was scrutinized before it was published and then given even more after it went to print.”
This all occurred at the state’s smallest daily newspaper with a staff of three reporters — including Burleson, a sports editor and a part-time lifestyles reporter.
The story lasted for three years leading up to the lease deadline, with almost daily stories. Then there were more stories as the lease challenge went through the courts.
“I received calls at my home,” Burleson said. “Trips to the grocery store would turn into a lease debate in aisle 3. It was crazy.”