Schwarzenegger Approves Casino Plans Near Fresno

4.29.08

Governor OKs Indian casino near Fresno
State legislators and U.S. officials must still approve plan for off-reservation site with 2,000 slot machines.

By Nancy Vogel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Monday that he has signed a deal to allow a Sierra Nevada Indian tribe to build a casino along a major highway near Fresno that could be worth about $25 million a year to the state.

But the tribe lacks federal permission to put a gambling operation on that land. And state legislators -- many of whom are wary of urban, off-reservation casinos -- must approve the compacts. Those are high hurdles that could take months, if not years, to clear.

The deal also may conflict with the governor's own policy on tribal gambling accords.

Under the unusual arrangement, the North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians would build the casino along California 99 in the heart of the Central Valley, about 40 miles from their foothills reservation. The tribe would share profits with the state and an impoverished tribe, the Wiyot, on the Humboldt County coast hundreds of miles away. The Wiyot would agree not to build a casino on their land near Humboldt Bay.

Schwarzenegger's official policy, spelled out in a May 2005 proclamation, states that he will not negotiate with tribes that do not already own land that the federal government deems eligible for a casino.

It also states that Schwarzenegger will oppose casino construction in urban areas away from tribal reservations.

The proposed North Fork casino is less than a mile from Madera, population 46,000, and about 22 miles northwest of Fresno. It is owned by Station Casinos, a Las Vegas company pursuing projects with several California tribes.

"Placing a casino along Highway 99 right at the foot of the city of Fresno is certainly an urban casino -- there is no other way to see it," said state Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter), who heads the Senate committee that oversees gambling.

In a press release, Florez called the proposal "erratic" and "illogical."

Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Hoch, defended the agreement. It is consistent with the governor's gambling policy because the North Fork tribe does own land that is federally eligible for casino construction, she said -- it just isn't the land where the tribe proposes a casino.

"These compacts are novel approaches to providing what is best for the state of California," she said.

Under the compact, the North Fork tribe would build a hotel and casino with 2,000 slot machines and give the state 13.5% to 22% of net revenues, with the state's share rising as revenues increase.

The tribe also would share a small percentage of revenues -- estimated at $3 million to $5 million a year -- with the 600-member Wiyot tribe. Wiyot tribal administrator Maura Eastman said the money would probably be used to invest in economic development.

North Fork tribal Chairwoman Elaine Bethel Fink said her tribe's rancheria south of Yosemite National Park is too remote for a casino.

"Environmentally, it just makes sense for us to partner up," she said.

Schwarzenegger failed the last time he sought federal and state approval for an off-reservation casino. In 2005, he struck a deal with the Los Coyotes band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians in San Diego County and the Big Lagoon Rancheria of Humboldt County to open casinos in the Mojave Desert town of Barstow, where city officials eagerly sought the jobs it would offer.

Legislators -- who can ratify or reject tribal gambling compacts negotiated by the governor but cannot change them -- refused to vote on the Barstow deals.

In any case, the U.S. Department of the Interior refused to allow the tribes to use the Barstow land for casinos because of the potential harm of tribal families leaving their reservations to work in casinos hundreds of miles away.

Schwarzenegger said he would not submit the North Fork and Wiyot compacts to the Legislature until the secretary of the Interior gives North Fork approval to use the land near California 99 for a casino.

There is no guarantee that will happen.

In January, the Bush administration toughened its stance on off-reservation casinos and promised greater scrutiny on casino proposals more than a "commutable distance" from a reservation.

Cheryl Schmit, director of the gambling watchdog group Stand Up for California, said the compacts, if they are ever implemented, could lead to more casinos near big California cities.

"I think the policy of negotiating before the tribe even owns the land . . . is an invitation to further off-reservation gaming expansion," she said.

nancy.vogel@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-casinos29apr29,0,966956.story

A desperate Barwest spokesman Tom Shields once again fails to deliver the truth; Cheryl Schmit manufactures rumors too

8.13.07

Tribe fails in attempt to head off 2 casinos

Joe Nelson, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun

The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians failed to win support last week at a legislative conference in its effort to change U.S. law governing Indian casinos.

Jacob Coin, tribal spokesman, cut short his attempt to win support at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Boston for a change in the law that would bar tribes from building off-reservation casinos unless they can prove an ancestral tie to the land where the casino is to be built.

Billions of dollars are at stake. And Barstow is the prize. Three tribes are vying to build a casino in that city on the solitary route to Las Vegas from Southern California over which thousands of cars travel every day.

San Manuel is opposed to the Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians of northeastern San Diego County and the Big Lagoon Rancheria tribe of Humboldt County building a casino in Barstow, near the outlet malls because, according to Coin, the tribes do not hold ancestral ties to the land.

The Chemehuevis along the Colorado River also want to build a casino in Barstow. The Chemehuevis have ancestral ties to Barstow.

The National Conference is a bipartisan organization that serves the legislators and staffs of all 50 states, as well as the commonwealths and territories.

Coin said he was hoping to schedule meetings with legislators or members of their executive staffs to organize a congressional push to amend the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. But those efforts were unsuccessful.

The casino project has enthusiastic support from the city of Barstow, which stands to gain 4.4 percent of an estimated $160 million to $170 million in net gaming revenue annually, a new fire station and an ambulance in the deal, said Tom Shields, spokesman for the Los Coyotes and Big Lagoon tribes. Shields also represents Bar-West, the Detroit-based company that hopes to build and operate twin casinos for the Los Coyotes and Big Lagoon. Its parent corporation already operates casinos in other states.

He said San Manuel's push to thwart the two tribes from getting a casino built is part of a larger effort to keep poorer tribes from competing with high-profit-generating casinos like San Manuel.

"They are just trying to prevent competition. They want to be the only casino between Las Vegas and San Bernardino," Shields said. "They're trying to introduce bogus issues which have nothing to do with the law."

Coin denied the allegation.

"Our response to that, very simply, is that the Chemehuevi tribe along the Colorado River, they are also proposing a casino in Barstow, and we're not opposed to that because they share ancestral connections to the Barstow area with the Serrano Indians," said Coin. San Manuels are Serrano.

But Shields and others say the San Manuels have a commercial interest in Barstow, and are working with the Chemehuevis in trying to get their own casino built.

"There appears to be some sort of business relationship between the two tribes (San Manuel and Chemehuevi)," said Cheryl Schmit co-director of Stand Up for California, a nonprofit organization focusing on gambling issues in California. "It would appear that in trying to pass legislation making a historical nexus to the land, San Manuel would benefit from being partnered with Chemehuevi for a casino in Barstow. It would be a mandatory acquisition."

But Coin maintains the issue of "reservation shopping" has become a huge one at the state level, with concern centered primarily on tribes not only moving hundreds of miles across county boundaries in their own states, but crossing state lines as well to build casinos.

"It's not just these two tribes. There's states all over the country where this kind of reservation shopping has raised alarms," Coin said, adding that the states of New York, Illinois and Ohio are all experiencing situations where tribes are vying to build casinos off their reservations.

In California alone, about 40 tribes are trying to get casinos built off their reservations, Schmit said.

The provisions provided in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, Shields said, were drafted for tribes like Los Coyotes and Big Lagoon.

The Los Coyotes reservation comprises 30,000 acres on a mountaintop in northeastern San Diego County unfit for a casino project.

"This is a reservation that's just received electricity around its edges in the last decade," Shields said.

Big Lagoon sits on 20 acres of environmentally sensitive and picturesque coastline in Humboldt County. It has one of the few natural working lagoons in California, Shields said.

The tribe planned to develop on the land but was sued, and as part of a settlement in 2005, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a compact with the tribe the would allow it to build a casino in Barstow. But the Legislature has refused to enact a measure that would permit the casino. Even if it overcomes that obstacle, the tribe still must obtain permission of the federal government before the casino can be built.

"It's a settlement of this lawsuit for them to go to Barstow. That is the furthest thing from reservation shopping," Shields said. "They're not looking to be millionaires, they're just looking for an opportunity to become self-sufficient."

Labor no longer able to block gaming pacts

6.08.07

Gaming impasse beginning to thaw
Compacts won't have labor-organizing tool

By James P. Sweeney
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

SACRAMENTO – After months of strategic circling, Assembly Democrats are reaching out to some of the state's most powerful Indian tribes, seeking a compromise that could seal multibillion-dollar gambling deals that have been stalled since August.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, has told organized labor it will not get what it wants in the agreements and is discussing revisions on other issues that could be made without renegotiating the compacts, lawmakers and knowledgeable sources said.

That has spurred intense negotiations over the past week aimed at breaking the long impasse. The Pechanga tribe near Temecula was on the brink of a deal, although an aide to the speaker said nothing had been finalized.

“It's like any legislative discussion,” said Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Núñez. “They're close. Sometimes you move forward, sometimes you move back. But they're making progress.”

Núñez and Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, a Fremont Democrat who is the speaker's point man on the compacts, have been in talks with the tribes for months. But the negotiations took off after Núñez invited leaders of four of the tribes to lunch in his office Monday.

“We're talking to see what we can work out,” Danny Tucker, chairman of the Sycuan band near El Cajon, said afterward.

A few days earlier, sources said Núñez told state and national labor leaders in a conference call that he would not be able to get their key objective included in the gambling compacts – a collective-bargaining tool known as card-check neutrality.

Labor leaders say card-check neutrality – the ability to organize workers simply by signing up a majority on cards expressing support for a union – is necessary to protect easily intimidated casino employees, who work under surveillance cameras that permit almost constant scrutiny by management.

But the five tribes with pending compacts – Sycuan, Pechanga, Agua Caliente of Palm Springs, Morongo of Riverside County and San Manuel of San Bernardino County – adamantly oppose tougher labor provisions in their compacts, which already permit unions approved through secret-ballot elections.

“Sycuan employees have had the right to organize . . . since our compact took effect in May of 2000,” Tucker told a Senate committee in April. “For the past seven years, no union has made any effort to organize our employees.”

Since California voters legalized Indian casinos in 2000, the state has become the nation's biggest tribal gaming market, with nearly 60 casinos that generated $7.7 billion in revenues last year.

The pending compacts would allow the five tribes to collectively add up to 22,500 slot machines – doubling and in some cases tripling their existing operations – in one of the largest gambling expansions in state history.

In return, the tribes agreed to give the state a larger cut, projected at more than $22 billion over the life of the compacts that would expire at the end of 2030.

The Department of Finance estimates the state is losing nearly $1.3 million every day the compacts are not ratified. But that is a fraction of what the tribes – already among the nation's wealthiest – are losing.

Powerful unions pressed Núñez and his Democratic majority to block the compacts in the fall. After lawmakers reconvened this year, the Senate ratified all five agreements in April, returning them to the Assembly where little seemed to have changed.

Núñez and Torrico, a former union attorney, both came out of the labor movement. But Torrico said that since last year, intervening events narrowed their options.

In February, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court ruled that tribes must comply with federal labor laws. The opinion against the San Manuel tribe held that Indian casinos should be treated as commercial, rather than government, operations under the National Labor Relations Act.

“The San Manuel decision, in my opinion, basically pre-empts state and local governments from entering into labor relations” with tribes, Torrico said earlier this week. “So even if we were to try to impose some language in the compact, I don't think it would be legally enforceable.”

Moreover, he said, the decision means that tribal employees “have the same rights and protections that any other employee in the country has when it comes to organizing.”

Jack Gribbon, state political director for UNITE HERE, the primary union attempting to organize Indian casinos, has warned that the San Manuel ruling is not final and, at the moment, applies only to San Manuel, which has a contract with the Communication Workers of America.

“We're continuing to work on this,” Gribbon said. “It's enormous sums of money for a handful of tribes. It's tens of thousands of workers with no enforceable right to organize for 23 years. There's a lot of marbles on the table.”

Torrico said he and Núñez still are trying to persuade the tribes to agree not to oppose organizing efforts.

“We're asking them to do it voluntarily, to be neutral when it comes to organizing,” he said.

Torrico said both sides also are exploring whether they can deal with other outstanding issues – such as casino operating rules, enforcement of child and spousal support orders and problem gambling – through a memorandum of understanding outside the compacts.

Others say federal law requires any such state regulation of Indian gaming to be negotiated and outlined in a compact. The tribes are adamantly opposed to reopening the compacts.

“These MOU's or MOA's, whatever they're going to call them, are nothing more than unenforceable promises,” said Cheryl Schmit of Stand Up for California, a grass-roots gambling watchdog.

Sen. Dean Florez, a Shafter Democrat who chairs a committee that held lengthy hearings on the compacts, said he didn't know whether any side deals would be enforceable.

“The key question,” Florez said, “is are these addendums to the compacts or substantial changes to the compacts? We want to know how that works.”

It's also not clear whether all five tribes may be included if there is a breakthrough.

Only the chairmen of Agua Caliente, Pechanga, San Manuel and Sycuan were invited to lunch with Núñez and Torrico. Morongo, which angered Núñez and other Democrats with a multimillion-dollar media campaign urging approval of the compacts, was deliberately excluded.

“I'm not going to talk about that,” Morongo spokesman Patrick Dorinson said of the slight. “There have been discussions, and we think things are moving in a positive direction.”

Núñez also reportedly was incensed that former Democratic Speaker Willie Brown, working as a lobbyist for Morongo, was attempting to peel off Democrats to vote for the compacts.

Núñez alluded to that when he was introduced by Brown at a recent roast of Senate President Pro Tempore Don Perata, D-Oakland.

“Thank you, Speaker Brown,” Núñez said. “Nice to see the casinos could spare you for the evening, or are you still on the clock?”


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