Posted on 02/04/2006 10:43:00 AM PST by calcowgirl
SACRAMENTO – As congressional leaders and others call for new constraints on off-reservation Indian gaming, the Schwarzenegger administration is preparing to roll out its fourth such casino compact in two years.
The pending agreement would allow the North Fork Rancheria band of central California to build a large casino-resort adjacent to busy state Route 99 just outside the city of Madera. The deal is expected to be announced within weeks, sources close to the negotiations said.
The proposal is sailing into a stiff political head wind, with bipartisan opposition to off-reservation gaming building from Sacramento to Washington, D.C.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who like Schwarzenegger is a Republican, held a hearing on the subject this week. He is expected to outline a stringent new set of rules for off-reservation casinos in legislation that could be introduced this month.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced last year that she will no longer consider compacts for such casinos until the desired site is taken into trust, a legal status that makes it eligible for gaming.
McCain and others, including some tribal leaders, say Indian gambling was intended to provide an economic boost for existing reservations and that casinos are proliferating in places where they were never intended to be, particularly in or near urban areas.
Some tribes and their financial backers have engaged in what critics call “reservation shopping” for lucrative new casino sites.
The pending North Fork agreement surfaces less than a year after Schwarzenegger signaled that he was taking a harder line by issuing his own edict on off-reservation casinos.
With some of California's big gaming tribes openly opposed to off-reservation competition, the three compacts that Schwarzenegger already has signed for such casinos – one in suburban San Francisco and two in Barstow – remain in limbo awaiting ratification by the Legislature.
However, North Fork – one of the state's largest tribes, with nearly 1,400 members – believes that its project is different.
“I have trouble characterizing it as off-reservation,” said John Maier, North Fork's attorney. “This is the tribe's ancestral lands. It's not Barstow. They are not moving 700 miles away.”
Maier was alluding to the Big Lagoon tribe of Humboldt County, which secured one of the two compacts Schwarzenegger approved for Barstow. The Los Coyotes Band of remote San Diego County has the other one. North Fork's move would be about 40 miles away.
The casino, a $250 million project that includes a 200-room hotel, has been welcomed by Madera County, which would receive up to $100 million under an agreement already negotiated and signed by the tribe.
“This is not reservation shopping,” said Cheryl Schmit of Stand Up for California, a grass-roots organization that has challenged the spread of tribal gambling all over the state. “This is the state exercising its authority to locate gaming where it is wanted.”
Schmit said she has taken no position on the project. Others say it will be a tough sell.
“The chances of that compact moving in the Legislature, I think, are very slim,” said Howard Dickstein, a prominent tribal attorney who has been close to the Schwarzenegger administration. “I don't know why they would do it.”
An administration spokesman declined to comment on the status of the negotiations. But insiders noted that Station Casinos, the Nevada company that would develop and manage the project, is represented by lobbyist Darius Anderson, who served as best man at the commitment ceremony of Susan Kennedy, Schwarzenegger's new chief of staff.
The North Fork compact has been in the works for months and reportedly was about to be introduced late last summer. In what may be a similar situation, the Quechan tribe of Imperial County disclosed in a recent lawsuit that the administration finished its new compact in January 2005 but waited six months to submit it to the Legislature. Quechan's compact remains stalled there.
Indian gaming has grown into a $20 billion industry, with more than 400 casinos scattered across the nation, including 55 in California, which has more than any other state. San Diego County has eight casinos, with more on the way.
Federal law generally restricts tribal gaming to reservations and other Indian lands that existed when the law was adopted Oct. 17, 1988. However, exceptions in the law have been used to build at least 26 casinos on new lands, according to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The North Fork band takes its name from a Sierra foothills community. The tribe has no reservation, although some of its members own 80 acres near the town of North Fork that have been designated Indian lands and could be used for gaming, said Maier, the tribe's attorney.
Schwarzenegger took what appeared to be a tough new stance on the off-reservation casinos in a proclamation issued last May. The governor said he would not consider off-reservation proposals unless they are outside urban areas, have local support and serve some other “clear, independent public policy, separate and apart from any increased economic benefit . . . to the state, community or Indian tribe.”
With the Barstow compacts, the administration's attorneys noted that the deals resolved a long-standing lawsuit in which the Big Lagoon tribe had been attempting to develop a casino in an environmentally sensitive area.
The 80 acres North Fork could use for gaming borders the Sierra National Forest and also may be considered environmentally unsuitable for a casino development. The preferred site is about 20 miles north of Fresno, just outside Madera, a city of about 50,000 people.
“This is one of the largest tribes in California and among the poorest of them,” Maier said. “I understand the times they are a-changing, but this is a project that will benefit Madera County and the larger community.”
While the project apparently has broad local support, it has drawn formidable opposition from state Sen. Dean Florez, a Kern County Democrat who is chairman of the Governmental Organization Committee, which screens all tribal-state compacts.
“Indian casinos should remain on Indian lands as promised to the voters,” Florez said in an e-mail. He has introduced legislation that would require a countywide advisory vote on the proposal.
The Picayune Rancheria, which operates a large casino in nearby Coarsegold, also has financed a media campaign against the project. Another big Fresno-area gaming tribe, Table Mountain Rancheria, also has questioned North Fork's plans.
“Table Mountain is concerned about the proliferation of off-reservation gaming,” said Dan Casas, the tribe's attorney.
There's a casino everywhere now. It was nice when it was just confined to Vegas and Atlantic City.
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