As expected, the Seneca County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday rejected the proposed settlement agreement with the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York, but its resolution left the door open for further negotiation.

The same proposal has been made to the Cayuga County Legislature, which has yet to take a vote. The tribe has given both counties until the end of the month to give an answer.

Seneca County lawmakers were unanimous in their vote. An proposal to table the vote made by David Dresser, that county's Native American Affairs Committee chairman, failed in a 10-4 vote. He had sought to delay a vote until after county officials had a meeting scheduled with Gov. Eliot Spitzer's representative handling the issue. Representatives of both counties will be meeting with that representative, Richard Rifkin, on Thursday in Syracuse.

Under the proposal in its current form, the Cayugas would give up their right to continuously apply to the federal government to take their open market property purchases into trust; to run Class II, or bingo hall gaming, without getting county approval first; and to their claim to their 64,000-acre historic homeland surrounding northern Cayuga Lake that is based on a disputed 1700s-era treaty.

The counties would get a portion of the casino's net slot drop. The tribe would be able to have up to 10,000 acres kept in sovereign status, but the acreage would be limited to three groups and make up no more than 20 percent of any municipality in the land claim area. The Cayugas would get a state gaming compact for a casino, most likely in the Catskills.