BIA Ban
The U.S. Interior Department has denied 22 of 30 applications for off-reservation tribal casinos. The proposals range from the $600 million casino complex New York’s St. Regis Mohawks plan at the Monticello Raceway to 10-acre projects in Arkansas and Michigan.
Eleven died because the federal agency deemed the paperwork incomplete. Eleven more fell because Interior sees the proposed sites as too far from reservations.
“Commutability” was the main distance issue Interior listed in four-page, January 4 form letters killing plans for taking land into trust as far as 1,500 miles from a reservation: A reservation would not benefit if its residents moved away to take jobs at their tribe’s distant casino, the agency said.
The move follows the January 3 distribution of six pages of policy guidance to regional Interior offices from Assistant Secretary Carl Artman. For “two-part determinations” requiring state and federal approvals under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, policy now requires “greater scrutiny to the tribe’s justification of anticipated benefits” of a trust-land acquisition and “greater weight to concerns raised by state and local governments” about oversight and removing land from tax rolls.
“The way the Interior Department phrased this, this is a firm rejection of off-reservation gambling,” says Joe Monahan of the Committee to Protect Dona Ana County in New Mexico. The group, supported by Sunland Park Race Track and Casino owner Stan Fulton, opposed the Jemez Pueblo’s application, one of those rejected over commutability.
“We’re trying to sort out all the issues,” says a spokeswoman for Jemez development partner Gerald Peters. Her remark reflects the shock, anger and bewilderment experienced by affected tribes and their backers.
Interior’s move effectively kills perhaps $1 billion or more in planned construction. Also undermined are development plans for many tribes and some communities counting on jobs and service fees from completed casinos.
A report just before Interior’s letters went out listed two Romulus, Michigan, officials with February appointments on Capitol Hill in Washington to promote the Hannahville tribe’s casino plan. The site is too far from Hannahville’s reservation, Interior announced the next day.
Three days later, Michigan’s Lac Vieux Desert Band presented plans for a Muskegon casino, one of three off-rez proposals for the city. Odds against the project are high, with Muskegon about 400 miles from the small gaming tribe’s reservation. Interior sent back its application for a nearer Iron Mountain casino as incomplete.
The news also sent some backers’ credibility or stock prices plunging. Shares of St. Regis Mohawk backer Empire Resorts fell 54 percent, to $1.42. The Monticello track owner says it will fight the decision.
Interior’s action also created years of grist for attorneys, stifled possible competition for some existing casinos, and even raised a small issue for presidential politics. Some tribes say they may bide time for 12 months until a new federal administration is seated in Washington, then resume their efforts.
For reasons U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs spokesman Shane Wolfe would not explain, BIA’s parent agency left alone applications for off-reservation casinos at Beloit and Kenosha, Wisconsin; Cascade Locks, Oregon; and five more.
Tribes with incomplete applications can submit them again. One, Washington’s Muckleshoot, pointed out that it filed its application to meet an April 2006 deadline and “preserve its options.” It has no current plan for a casino on land it owns at the Emerald Downs racetrack in Auburn, Washington, near the tribe’s active casino-one of the largest in the state.
Others say the new federal policy makes re-applying pointless. “Why move ahead if you don’t know what the rules are?” says Bill Johnson of North Dakota’s Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.
Tribes can also appeal the rejections within Interior or in federal courts. Many vowed to last month, lawyers in tow. “Our legal team is going to take a look at it,” says a spokesman for the joint Los Coyotes-Big Lagoon plan in Barstow, California. “Everyone seems to believe that this is just an attempt by the Interior secretary to get rid of politically unpopular applications. It’s a wholesale purging.”
Tribes rejected over distance all got letters that ended, “Please be advised that since this land will not be accepted into trust, the proposed site does not qualify for Indian gaming pursuant to IGRA. It is our hope that the department will be able to work with the tribe to identify economic development opportunities that we can support mutually.”
Retorted Los Coyotes spokesperson Francine Kupsch, “Changing the rules at this late date is a cruel and arbitrary act by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. He implies that tribal members would be better off poor and unemployed and living on the reservation rather than living off the reservation near the casino with a job. To invent new rules at this juncture and then apply them retroactively reeks of politics.”
DOWN AND OUT?
Jemez for 78 acres in Anthony, New Mexico, 293 miles away
St. Regis Mohawk for 29 acres at Monticello Raceway in New York, 350 miles away
Choctaw for 61 acres in Jackson County, Mississippi, 175 miles away
Lac du Flambeau for 20 acres in Shullsburg, Wisconsin, 304 miles away
Hannahville for 10 acres in Romulus, Michigan, 457 miles away
Chemejuevi, Los Coyotes and Big Lagoon for Barstow, California, sites 135, 115 and 700 miles away
Seneca-Cayuga of Oklahoma for 230 acres in Montezuma, New York, 1,500 miles away
United Keetoowah in Oklahoma for 10 acres in Fort Smith, Arkansas, 70 miles away
Stockbridge-Munsee of Wisconsin for 333 acres in Thompson, New York, 1,000 miles away
Tigua (Ysleta del Sur) for 10 acres in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, near the El Paso, Texas, gaming market
Turtle Mountain, for 40 acres in Grand Forks, North Dakota
Lower Elwha for 16 acres in Port Angeles, Washington
Lac Vieux Desert for 10 acres in Iron Mountain, Michigan
Kickapoo and Sac and Fox jointly for 40 acres in Wyandotte County, Kansas
Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin for 110 acres in Lynwood, Illinois
Dry Creek for 277 acres in Petaluma, California
Colorado River of Arizona for 75 acres in Blythe, California
Confederated Colville for three parcels in Wenatchee, Washington
Burns Paiute for 42 acres near Ontario, Oregon
Muckleshoot for 185 acres at the Emerald Downs racetrack in Aurora, Washington
