Turtle Talk

From here, via Pechanga:

But the agreements, intended to mitigate the impact of casinos and economic growth on sovereign Indian land held in trust by the federal government, are not without controversy.

Combined with a recent federal court ruling on the legality of tribes sharing casino revenue with the state, they muddle the future of California’s $7.3bn gambling industry.

“The whole nature of tribal, state and local government relations in California, as far as sharing revenues and mitigating the impacts of gaming, is being thrown up for grabs,” observes Nikki Symington, a consultant for the Rincon Band of Luiseno Indians, a small community near San Diego. “I don’t know that there is any happy solution down the road.”

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act intended that non-Indian use of gambling revenue be largely restricted to regulatory oversight, problem gambling and other casino impacts.

Many of the fifty-seven California tribes that signed model 1999 tribal-state agreements, or compacts, allowing them to operate casinos voluntarily entered into local intergovernmental agreements and paid into a special distribution fund for traffic, public safety and other local impacts.

There are 107 federally recognize

d tribes in California, more than any state. Until casino gambling most were small, impoverished communities lacking roads, adequate utilities and with no history of government and political relations with the state, counties and municipalities.

“Our communities have been here a long, long time. But for 200 years we have been largely invisible, politically disenfranchised and isolated by poverty and neglect,” Anthony Pico, a citizen of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, told a November 2007 meeting of the San Diego Association of Governments. “Gaming changed all that. We are trying to do what it has taken our neighboring counties and municipalities several generations to accomplish.”

Since taking office in 2003, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in negotiating new agreements and amended 1999 compacts, has been funneling large sums of casino revenue to the state’s general fund in an effort to offset a rising budget deficit.

In exchange he has been allowing tribes an increasing number of slot machines. Some $30m in 2007-08 special distribution fund monies were diverted to the diminishing general fund.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in April ruled it was illegal for Schwarzenegger, in renegotiating a compact with the Rincon Band , to demand the tribe pay a share of its casino money into the general fund. Such a payment, the court ruled, constituted a tax in violation of IGRA.

U.S. Interior Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk cited the Rincon decision in his Aug. 17 denial of a proposed compact for the Habematolel Pomo Indians of Upper Lake.

Echo Hawk said the agreement violated IGRA’s tax prohibition, a decision many believe Interior should have made in reviewing previous Schwarzenegger compacts.

Attorneys differ as to what impact the Rincon decision might have on future tribal-state compact negotiations.

“I don’t think there is a tribe in the state that hasn’t been willing to sit down and try and work out what the impacts will be for the local governments,” tribal attorney Anna Kimber said. “It’s the demands the state has put on the tribes over and above local mitigations that have caused problems.”

More compelling are some 20 new and renegotiated compacts agreed to since 1999 that include what are referred to as “judicially enforceable local agreements” dealing with environmental and other mitigation issues between tribes, counties and municipalities. The agreements, subject to binding arbitration, are intended to rectify complaints casinos were creating crime, traffic and other burdens on county and municipal services.

“The (1999) compacts, in terms of environmental concerns and mitigations, more or less left things to the tribes,” said DeAnn Baker, a lobbyist for the California State Association of Counties. “Some tribes acted responsibly toward affected communities. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case across the state.”

Some local officials contend there remains tens of millions of dollars in unfunded casino impacts. Baker said post-1999 compacts appear to be resolving issues.

“As a lobbyist I don’t have this groundswell of interest from counties to pursue changes, whereas we certainly did when we began our efforts to get judicially enforceable local agreement language in the compacts,” she said.

Many tribes voluntarily contribute millions of dollars a year to county and municipal agencies and local charities. Tribal fire departments in Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino counties have mutual aid agreements with surrounding fire districts.

But problems remain. The Temecula City Council recently voted to sue the Pechanga Band of Lusieño Indians for $2m in mitigation payments in an intergovernmental agreement required under a renegotiated, 2006 compact.

Tribal Chairman Mark Macarro, in a prepared statement, said the City Council “can continue down a litigious path of conflict and dissipate what remains of any good will between Pechanga and the city. Or, it can honor both the letter and spirit of the intergovernmental agreement we reached earlier in the year so we can conclude negotiations with the county of Riverside to complete the agreement.” The agreement calls for the tribe to pay the city $52m over 21 years.

Temecula and Riverside County officials declined comment.

Many tribes view compact provisions requiring binding arbitration of intergovernmental agreements as an infringement on tribal sovereignty and self-governance.

Russ Crabtree, tribal administrator for the Smith River Rancheria, said the provisions could impede renegotiating the 1999 compact, which expires in 2020. The tribe, he said, has “excellent” relations and voluntary MOUs with Del Norte County government agencies.

Tribes in most states have mature governments and communities, large reservations in federal trust status and a long history of treaties and government relations with federal, state, county and municipal agencies.

The same is not true in California, where tribal enrollments are small (there are about 40,000 members of the 107 tribes), as are reservations and Rancherias. Indigenous Americans in California were victims of state-sanctioned genocide in the 1800s and run off their land to make way for settlers and gold miners. Eighteen treaties agreed to in 1852 setting aside 8.5 million acres for native reservations were never ratified.

Sixty California tribes operate 61 casinos, many with hotels, generating $7.3b annually and employing more than 50,000 workers, 90 percent of them non-Indian. Casinos are credited with generating a wave of economic growth.

John Tahsuda, a Kiowa-Comanche and Washington, D.C., political consultant, said the respect and recognition other states have toward Indian communities is missing in California.

“Tribes are not viewed as indigenous communities,” Tahsuda said. “They are viewed as very small entities with huge economic assets. Economic desperation is driving local government officials to want more. They want tribes to cough up more.

“I don’t know that, with some exceptions, tribes and local governments have moved beyond what you would call mutual cessation of fighting, an end to hostilities.”

“It’s unfortunate,” said Bruce Goldstein, Sonoma County assistant county counsel, “that the maturation of government-to-government relations between local and tribal governments in California for the most part has taken place in the context of gaming. It’s been difficult.”