Casino pacts with Indians win approval 10:00 PM PDT on Thursday, June 28, 2007
By JIM MILLER and MICHELLE DeARMOND
The Press-Enterprise
SACRAMENTO - California lawmakers approved major gambling deals with four Southern California tribes Thursday, paving the way for some of the world's largest casinos in the Inland area and dealing organized labor a major defeat.
With no debate, the Assembly voted to ratify lucrative slot-machine agreements with the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians -- all from Riverside County -- and the Sycuan Band of Kumeyaay Indians in San Diego County.
The votes end a 10-month battle between politically powerful tribes and unions, who claim that the deals fail to protect casino workers trying to organize.
The 23-year agreements, known as compacts, still need federal approval before they can take effect next year.
If the agreements are enacted, they would allow the tribes to nearly double the number of slot machines in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, bringing the total to about 30,000 and creating casinos with potentially twice as many slot machines as some of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas, such as the MGM Grand. In exchange, the state would get a share of the tribes' slot-machine profits, earning the state up to $800 million annually.
Thursday's votes come just two days before the start of the new fiscal year, with lawmakers anxious for any additional revenue.
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The new agreement would allow the Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula to add 5,500 slot machines. A poll in May showed that a majority of Inland residents did not support increasing the number of slot machines in their communities.
Lawmakers also approved Thursday separate side deals negotiated in recent weeks to address Democrats' concerns about the compacts. The deals call for casino audits, enforcement of child-support orders, and other rules.
Excluded from Thursday's action was the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. The tribe, which has a casino near San Bernardino, refused to sign a side deal and still needs Assembly approval for a renegotiated compact to expand its casino by 5,500 slot machines.
The renegotiated compacts generated intense lobbying and negotiating since emerging in August. A poll late last month by The Press-Enterprise showed that a majority of Inland residents did not support increasing the number of slot machines in their communities.
All Inland lawmakers backed the compacts.
Labor Outcry
Thursday's votes marked a crushing loss for labor unions, who complain that the compacts do too little to ensure casino workers' right to organize. Dozens of union members worked the Capitol, contacting majority Democrats typically sympathetic to labor, but in the end not one Assembly member Thursday raised those concerns.
Jack Gribbon, political director for Unite-Here, the hotel and restaurant employees union that would like to organize California casino workers, blasted Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles.
Nunez told lawmakers that tribal leaders assured him that they would not retaliate against workers who wanted to unionize. But Gribbon called the pledges meaningless.
"It's just more cover to make him seem like a good guy, like he actually accomplished something here, rather than turning his back on tens of thousands of the working poor," Gribbon said.
"It's not over," Gribbon added.
Union officials plan to meet today to talk about what to do next, he said. Possibilities range from challenging the compacts through a referendum to mounting a casino organizing push to test tribes' pledges of fairness, he said.
Agua Caliente Chairman Richard Milanovich said he promised Nunez the tribe will follow the terms of tribal labor-union rules adopted in 2000, which remain in effect under the renegotiated agreements. He said he was frustrated by the lawmakers' insistence on the side deals.
The tribe already does what is contained in the legislation, Milanovich said.
"It was exasperating for all of us to go through the process once we got to this point," he said. "Why did it take so ... long? Why?"
Nunez, who cut his teeth in the labor movement, rejected labor leaders' complaints that he had abandoned casino workers.
"I support them and I support them going onto these tribal casinos and organizing their members," he said. "But I didn't negotiate the compacts. The governor negotiated the compacts."
Gov. Schwarzenegger released a written statement praising the Assembly vote. He called on lawmakers, however, to ratify the compact with San Manuel and two other agreements pending in Sacramento.
The Los Coyotes Band of Cahulla and Cupeno Indians in San Diego County and Big Lagoon Rancheria in Humboldt County want to build side-by-side casinos in Barstow, but have yet to get approval in either house.
Side Deals
Legislative advisers said the side deals between Schwarzenegger and the tribes likely are unprecedented in the history of Indian gambling, although the Department of Interior was unable to verify that. A spokeswoman for the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs also would not comment on how the Interior Department might handle the side deals.
I. Nelson Rose, an international gambling expert, said he was unaware of any tribes enacting similar memoranda with states "because the right way to do it is to put it in the compact." By not making these agreements part of the compact, Nelson said they may not be enforceable.
Tribes have sovereign immunity. They would have to waive that in order for such an agreement to be binding and they need to have federal approval, he said.
Howard Dickstein, an attorney for several tribes who signed renegotiated compacts in 2004, said the side agreements are not enforceable if they're not part of a compact. If lawmakers send the memoranda to the Interior Department, the Interior secretary may say the deals are nonbinding and ratify the compacts but not the side deals, known as memoranda of agreement.
The Interior Department may decide "the MOAs are effectively a nullity, and the Legislature just got snookered," he said. "That's a real possibility."
