Battin Bill - Free Slots For Tribes

Sen. Jim Battin, R-Palm Desert in Riverside County has introduced a bill that would double the number of slot machines Indian tribes may install.

The bill would allow California's tribes to add slot machines without having to renegotiate their agreements with the state.

The bill would effectively undercut Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts to get more money from casinos, one of the governor's key selling points for the four compacts voters approved Feb. 5.

Battin's proposal, Senate Bill 1201, would expand the number of machine licenses statewide from 60,000 to 122,000. That would help tribes such as Rincon and San Pasqual in Valley Center, who want more machines. The state however says there are no more available.

The agreements, negotiated under Gov. Gray Davis in 1999, allow each tribe to operate up to 2,000 slot machines. But the vaguely worded documents included a statewide cap on the number of machines, a cap that some interpreted to be as low as 45,000 and others as high as 113,000.

The state agency in charge of regulating tribal gambling locked the figure at about 60,000 in 2002. That left many tribes short of the 2,000 limit, including those that were either too slow to ask for the maximum or who did not have the facilities ready to operate that many slots.

Mark Reeder, a spokesman for Battin, said the senator wants to help those tribes.

"It's pretty straightforward," Reeder said of the bill. "Tribes were promised 2,000 machines and some of them can't get them. He wants to enlarge the pool."

Battin's district includes Menifee, Sun City, Winchester, Canyon Lake and Lake Elsinore. His district also includes two of the four big-casino tribes whose compacts were approved by voters Feb. 5: the Agua Caliente Band of Indians in Palm Springs, who can now have up to 5,000 slot machines, and the Morongo Band of Mission Indians near Cabazon, whose ratified compact authorizes up to 7,500 slot machines.

Battin's district also includes the Cahuilla Band of Mission Indians, whose casino could benefit from his proposed bill.

Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Sabrina Lockhart said Tuesday that the governor has not taken a position on Battin's bill.

Cheryl Schmit, director of the gambling watchdog group Stand Up for California, said the bill would cost the governor his leverage at a time when he would like to renegotiate more agreements.

Schmit said that the Legislature cannot change the terms of the compact, as Battin's bill would do. It is up to the tribes and the governor to negotiate the agreements, and the Legislature can only approve or veto the deals, she said.

Professor I. Nelson Rose, who specializes in gambling law at Whittier Law School, said there are about a dozen tribes that could "really take advantage" if the bill is approved.

However, Rose said the bill has little chance of passing because it does not require tribes to pay more money beyond what is agreed in their existing compacts.

"If it's not going to give any more money to the state, then the question is, why do it?" Rose said.

There are 61 tribes that negotiated agreements in 1999 under then-Gov. Davis. Fifty-eight tribes have casinos, with about 60,000 slot machines on their gambling floors combined.

Only about a dozen tribes have 2,000 slot machines or more, according the California Gambling Control Commission, the state agency that regulates the casinos.

On the other hand, Rincon, which has 1,599 slot machines, is suing the governor to get more licenses. Officials with the tribe say that the fees the governor is seeking in exchange for the licenses amount to an illegal tax on tribal governments.

Scott Crowell, an attorney for Rincon, said Battin's bill is a "good idea."

"It is simply because of a contrived and illegal interpretation of the compact that tribes like Rincon cannot develop to include 2,000 machines," Crowell said.

Battin's bill, which was introduced Feb. 13, is expected to be heard in the Senate Governmental Organization Committee next month, Reeder said.

My personal thoughts? We have a process in place which I believe is a good one. If tribes want more slots then they should have to go through the negotiations with the Gov, If an agreement is reached then it must pass through the Senate and House and then the Dept of Interior and then mitigate issues with the local communities.

To just give tribes more slots because they were too slow to get to the negotiations or because they didn’t have the facilities back then is just plain wrong. Its not good for the state or the host communities and not fair to the tribes that have gone through the long 2-3 yr process.

In a somewhat related matter, and an update on what’s happening up in Rohnert Park, local city and county governments seeking to gain more control over casino negotiations are taking their case to the federal Department of the Interior.

Representatives of the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties are set to meet with Carl Artman, the assistant secretary of Indian Affairs at Interior, on March 7 when he visits California.

These groups are seeking three things local governments aren’t currently getting in casino negotiations, said CSAC spokeswoman DeAnn Baker: adequate notice that negotiations are taking place; meaningful consultation in the process; and consent of the community where a casino would be placed.

“Most of these tribal gaming casinos have been set up in unincorporated areas, and there were significant impacts,” Baker said. “You’re taking these lands off the tax rolls.”

These principles are laid out in a Federal Tribal Lands Policy that CSAC created through its Indian Working Group. This was included in a Dec. 27 letter sent to Artman requesting the meeting from Yolo County Supervisor Mark McGowan. McGowan chairs CSAC’s Housing, Land Use and Transportation Committee and is a former head of the Indian Working Group.

“While the impacts of Indian gaming fall primarily on local governments and the citizens they serve, Indian policy is largely directed and controlled at the federal level,” he wrote. “Just as it is essential that tribes mitigate all off-reservation impacts caused by tribal gaming, it is just as equally important that local governments have a meaningful voice in the federal process.”

League of California Cities spokeswoman Liisa Stark said Artman and his agency have “been very receptive” to “starting a dialog” to give cities and counties a say.

As posted earlier by yours truly, the case of the Federation Indians of Graton Rancheria in Rohnert Park, a suburban community about 50 miles north of San Francisco is a pefect example of how local communities are fighting for more control over how or where casinos may be built.

Marilee Montgomery with the group Stop the Casino 101 up in Rohnert Park said,“This underscores what a lot of people have been saying for a long time — the impact on local governments is profound. They’re not in the middle of nowhere anymore.”

The local control issue has become particularly heated in the case of the Graton Rancheria. The tribe regained its federal recognition in 2000 after more than four decades in legal limbo. It hired Las Vegas-based management company Stations Casinos less than three years later in an ongoing attempt to get a casino.

Local Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, has been pressuring the administration for more information about the negotiations. The governor’s office, in turn, has repeatedly said it doesn’t comment on pending negotiations and has been following standard procedures.

“The governor’s office always considers local voters’ views when negotiating compacts,” said administration spokeswoman Sabrina Lockhart.

Lockhart said Schwarzenegger has been following the principles laid out in his 2005 Proclamation on Tribal Gaming Policy. The documents notes that “the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 … requires the State to negotiate in good faith for the conclusion of tribal-state gaming compacts with Indian tribes that request such negotiations when those tribes have eligible Indian lands.”

Among the caveats listed are that the land “is not within any urbanized area” and that the “local jurisdiction in which the tribe’s proposed gaming project is located supports the project.”

The local jurisdiction of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, however, does not appear to be on board with the project. It has been exchanging letters with the administration since the project was first reported on last summer.

On Dec. 28, supervisor Tim Smith wrote the governor “to express serious concerns … regarding the apparent initiation of compact negotiations” with the tribe. Not even knowing casino negotiations are happening makes it difficult to account for them in a county’s general plan, Smith said.

Smith received what he said was an inadequate response Feb 5. In her letter, Andrea Lynn Hoch, the governor’s legal affairs secretary, offered to meet with Smith and wrote, “It is the policy of this office not to comment on negotiations or discuss which tribes have initiated such negotiations.”

The board met Tuesday and voted down a proposal by board chairman Mike Kerns to put the question in front of county voters on the June ballot. Smith said he voted against the idea because it would cost the county election commission about $100,000 for a referendum that would have no legal standing.

“I felt like it would give folks a false sense of security that if they voted it down, it would have an impact,” Smith said. “It wouldn’t.”

However, the supervisors might take up the question again for placement on the November ballot.

One indication of how Sonoma County voters feel may have come on Feb. 5. While voters around the state approved referenda allowing four expanded gaming compacts with 58 percent of the vote, 59 percent of Sonoma County voters said no.

Only San Francisco County opposed the compacts by a wider margin, with 62 percent voting no.

Graton Chairman Greg Sarris said that if the supervisors had approved the vote, it would have made it difficult for him to convince his tribal members that they should continue to work in good faith with local government. He said he’s tried to “set a good example” by agreeing to allow unions and agreeing to a memorandum of understanding with the city of Rohnert Park to pay them $200 million in mitigation funds over 20 years.

Sarris acknowledged that these are actions he and the tribe took voluntarily. While he hopes other tribes will do the same things, he is against legally mandating such agreements with local governments.

“As an American Indian, I do not support anything that infringes on the sovereignty in exchange for the land and the lives that we lost,” Sarris said. “I think personally that Indians should make the choice to work with the local community. But I don’t think the federal government should require that. It erodes our notion as a sovereign nation.”

Sources:
http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?issueId=wxn6r3mnexwuiq&xid=wxonz4gui2sprv&_adctlid=v%7Cjq2q43wvsl855o%7Cwxop4z1c7hcru2
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/28/news/top_stories/1_25_422_27_08.txt