Electronic Bingo and Oneida Land Trust News

Battin Bingo Bill

Sen. Jim Battin, R-Palm Desert, introduced legislation last week that would impose mandatory fines of “not less than $10,000 per machine” on anyone caught with electronic bingo devices.

In addition, the measure – SB 864 – contains a so-called “bounty hunter provision” that would encourage private parties to bring civil actions against bingo parlors operating machines.

“It is an effort to stop these illegal (machines) – they're called bingo machines, they're really slot machines – from proliferating all over the state,” Battin said.

But Ravi Mehta, a lobbyist for a group of charities that depend on bingo machine revenues, said the legislation “will effectively put charitable bingo out of business.”

Although the Attorney General's Office has warned for years that the machines are illegal in California except on Indian reservations, no enforcement action was taken until two months ago.

In a statewide sweep, more than a dozen bingo operations in Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area and suburban Los Angeles County were given 30 days to remove several hundred machines.

Those orders, however, have been stayed temporarily by a federal judge who said charities have a “strong likelihood” of prevailing in a lawsuit challenging the state's move.

All of that has been frustrating for gaming tribes that view bingo machines as a growing and potentially unstoppable threat to their guaranteed monopoly on slot machines and other electronic gaming devices.

If charities are allowed to operate bingo machines, the tribes have warned, the state could forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars the tribes agreed to pay in exchange for the exclusive franchise.

Battin introduced his measure as an amendment to an unrelated measure pending in the Assembly. He said he did not introduce it at the behest of any specific Indian tribes.

“Nobody asked me to do it,” Battin said. “There's a lot of talk about it in Indian Country, that these machines need to be dealt with.”

In addition to mandatory fines, the measure requires courts to order the confiscation and destruction of bingo machines.

The bill began moving with the new Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles. It sailed out of the Rules Committee on a 10-0 vote so that it can be heard today in the Governmental Organization Committee.

Getting the bill passed through the Senate maybe a different story though. Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat scheduled to become the next Senate leader, introduced a measure earlier this year that would have sanctioned some electronic bingo games for charities. He shelved the bill in the face of opposition from powerful gaming tribes.


Seventh Lawsuit in Onieda Land Trust

A seventh lawsuit has been filed challenging the federal government's decision to take 13,004 acres into trust for the Oneida Indian Nation.

The latest suit was filed by two citizens groups, three elected officials and an Oneida nation member. It says the Department of Interior acted improperly and that the 1934 law giving the federal government the power to take land into trust doesn't apply to New York or the Oneidas.

Taking land into trust would "create a jurisdictional nightmare for the state and local governments, and would aggravate the ongoing economic destruction of the state and local economies due to the illegal operation on the land in question," says the suit, filed Saturday in federal district court in Utica.

The suit also says the Interior decision last month violates the spirit of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of the city of Sherrill and against the Oneida nation. Interior's action "represents an end run around (the Sherrill ruling) for the express purpose of avoiding the taxation and regulatory powers of the state and local governments," the suit says.

Plaintiffs in the suit are the Central New York Fair Business Association, the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, state Assemblyman David Townsend, Oneida County Legislators Michael Hennessy and Chad Davis, and Melvin Phillips, an Oneida who lives in Vernon.

The Department of Interior has agreed not to formally take the land into trust until at least Sept. 19, and Madison and Oneida counties have agreed not to continue foreclosure proceedings on nation land during the same time period.

Sources:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080625/news_1n25bingo.html
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1214297766270070.xml&coll=1