4.15.08
No Federal Approval, No Casino?
By John Myers, KQED
Legislation to change how, and possibly where, new Indian casinos are built in California cleared its first hurdle today at the state Capitol.
For years, the most controversial part of the tribal gaming process has been casinos proposed for land that either isn’t an ancestral reservation… or land that the federal government hasn’t yet recognized as part of a tribe’s reservation. Critics have derided such proposals as examples of “reservation shopping,” accusing tribes and their deep-pocketed investors of choosing locations solely based on how much money can be made.
The legislation in question, SB 1695, would change the way new casinos are approved, by prohibiting the governor from negotiating with any tribe whose casino land hasn’t yet been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Interior.
(A quick explainer to those who don’t follow this issue much: federal law lays out a long process for non-Indian land to become a reservation. It also requires a tribe to negotiate a formal gaming agreement, known as a compact, with the governor of the state before opening a casino.)
Governor Schwarzenegger has negotiated a number of casino compacts with Indian tribes since he took office, but his most controversial deals have seemed to be ones where the land hadn’t yet secured a federal OK. Most notable on this list: the long saga of the two tribes wanting to build side-by-side casinos in Barstow… even though the tribes’ reservations are in another part of the state. Schwarzenegger agreed to the casinos long before the feds had ruled on the proposal; earlier this year it was rejected.
The bill, authored by Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter), simply says that the governor can’t negotiate a formal compact until the feds have had their say. The current version of the legislation is notably more tame than the original, which would have essentially banned any tribe from opening a casino on land away from its ancestral home… presumably even if that tribe no longer has a reservation (and many don’t).
The bill sailed out of the Senate Governmental Organization committee this afternoon, which Florez chairs (its one dissenting vote: Sen. Pat Wiggins, a Democrat whose northern California district includes one of the tribes that wanted to go to Barstow).
A spokesperson for Schwarzenegger said the guv won’t take a position on the bill until it reaches his desk.
If the Legislature sends it to him, it certainly puts him in an interesting position: if he signs it, it would seem to imply that some mistakes were made in the past. And it would seemingly derail secret negotiations he might currently be conducting with some tribes (though there’s no official confirmation that any casno negotiations are even underway).
But if he vetoes it, critics of the rapid expansion of Indian gambling will say the governor is ignoring the plight of communities that don’t want casinos, and that he’s being inconsistent with his earlier pronouncements about the siting of new tribal gambling facilities.
1 comment:
If I am not mistaken that is how is was supposed to be, get the land and then go before the state. I applaud the effort but not the motive. Florez originally wanted to go way beyond what he should of, he like a lot of politicians feel that there personal views should become law. He is railing against a tribe that wanted to build like 40 miles away from its established reservation but within its ancestral lands. I would agree with these stupid politicians if the Tribes themselves had selected the sites for their reservations, but we all know that they were forced onto them with no choice. My personal feelings have been, and always will be if the land used to be the tribes then they should be able to build there with no interference from the government. So nice that the government stole the land from the Indians and won't even let them buy it back.
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