52° P/SUNNY, Tribe skips payment of $30 million
Loophole in deal with Schwarzenegger delays sharing gaming profits
Last Modified: Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 6:37 a.m.
SACRAMENTO -- Exploiting a loophole in a deal struck with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a San Diego County American Indian tribe has avoided paying the cash-strapped state $30 million in gambling profits.
Voters in February allowed four tribes to expand their casino operations in exchange for a larger share of their revenues. Three of the tribes must make the payments their compacts demand by the end of next month, but the Schwarzenegger administration last week said the Sycuan band of the Kumeyaay Nation could wait until next year to start payments.
That permission came four days after the Sycuan gave $45,000 to the campaign for a November redistricting initiative promoted by Schwarzenegger.
Sycuan spokesman Adam Day called the timing of the donation "a total coincidence."
A Schwarzenegger spokeswoman also denied any connection between the $45,000 and the agreement.
"It's not a donation that the governor solicited," said Julie Soderlund. "Regardless, the governor doesn't make decisions about policy based on anything other than what he feels is best for the state of California."
Excusing the Sycuan will cost the state $30 million, according to H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance.
Some opponents of the Schwarzenegger deals are saying, "I told you so."
Doug Elmets, who represents gambling tribes that fought the others' expansion, faults the Sycuan for not living up to its compact and the governor for not holding them to it. The two parties cut a side deal, he said, beyond what voters approved.
"It doesn't look good, because clearly the governor and the tribes made it appear as if this was going to be real money," said Elmets. "And now it looks like it's phony."
The Sycuan invoked a clause in its compact with Schwarzenegger, struck in August 2006, saying the tribal council had to approve the accord by Dec. 15, 2006. Otherwise, the governor could void the agreement.
The tribal council did not meet its deadline. But the governor declined to scrap the deal, agreeing instead to the delay.
Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said the postponement of payments was justified because the compact is good for the state and the tribe.
Day said the tribe wanted to plan its casino expansion before enacting the terms of the new agreement.
The Sycuan, like other tribes, has made payments to state-administered funds set up to help tribes without casinos and to help local governments cope with increased traffic and other casino side effects.
Under their agreements with Schwarzenegger, some of the four tribes' money will go to the state budget.
The Sycuan now have until January to ratify the compact. Once the pact takes effect, the tribe must make payments quarterly. The compact calls for $20 million a year from the tribe plus 15 percent of the revenue from any slot machines it adds.
Of the four accords that were at stake in February, only one besides Sycuan's -- that of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians -- required tribal council approval. The Morongo tribe ratified its deal in November 2006, long before the Legislature, U.S. Department of Interior and voters statewide gave approval.
The tribes with new deals -- the Sycuan, the Morongo, the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians -- spent $83 million campaigning for their casino expansions.
Their main claim was that the deals would generate billions of dollars for state coffers over the next 20 years.
During the campaign, Schwarzenegger appeared in television ads touting the financial benefits of the accords for taxpayers.
Opponents contended that the agreements would unleash one of the biggest gambling expansions in U.S. history and leave it up to the tribes to calculate California's share of slot machine revenue.
Palmer said he expects the state to get $527 million from the new deals through June 2009.
AP-NY-06-21-08 2104EDT
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Comments
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June 22, 2008 6:22:59 am
RE: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080622/wire/806220453 NOW WE HAVE A GOVERNOR WHO SPEAKS WITH FORKET TOUNGE ?WE SHOULD NEVER GET OR ALLOW AN AGREEMENT WITH THESE OR ANY TRIBES THEY DON'T CARE AND WE CAN'T SUE THEM? THEY HAVE THERE LAWYER'S DOING THE PAPPER WORK SEE IF I'M NOT RIGHT??WAT-TA-HAY PEACESMOKE PIPE....
June 22, 2008 9:30:21 am
California voters should be outraged at the deception being used by the Sycuan tribe here in SDCo. Promoting their desire to aid California's budget crisis upon passage by voters in February of expansion wishes, they have kept a secret about this loophole which denies the state promised revenue. Here in San Diego County there are numerous issues on the table for the casino tribes and time after time they have hidden behind tribal sovereignty when asked to be up front and honest. We have allowed too few people to be in charge of too much money and mix in politicians and this is rapidly becoming a runaway train. The best approach for solving this problem would to eliminate the tribal monopoly on casino gaming in order to keep the tail from wagging the dog. The time has come to bring this issue back to the voters.
June 22, 2008 10:30:44 am
Damn indian givers...no wonder I have voted against every single ballot measure involving indian gaming.
June 22, 2008 10:33:38 am
And this should surprise us? Everything that our self-deluded governor has allowed in this matter should be revoked. And all those state lawyers who reviewed this mess on behalf of the citizens of The Once Great State of California should be fired for incompetence. I don't ever want to see Davis hold a public office again, but we had a recall for this band of turkeys? And as for the Indians: when you are stupid enough (as a nation) to treat our Indian tribes as generously as we have we deserve what we get! If we would only turn off our bleeding hearts for a few years maybe we'd get back to some semblance of sanity!!!
June 22, 2008 2:20:24 pm
That's what happens when you depend your budget on deception, gambling and politicians. Pretty soon it all goes down the toilet. Remember about 20+ years ago we were going to save our state with the lottery. I would love to see those TV commercials in favor of that again. Typical bullship.
June 22, 2008 3:03:05 pm
I dont give those dirty Indians a red cent!
June 22, 2008 3:55:24 pm
I would like to see any of the actual Press Democrat reporters write about this same story.
Notice the AP's attention to detail? Notice the reporting of facts, rather than the spinning of what local politics dictates?
The entire indian gaming issue is a scam on its best day. It absolutely does bring money to the state that wasn't there before. But what we often forget is the cost of that new revenue. This is bad for California at a variety of levels. We will all pay for this in the long run.
June 22, 2008 6:30:54 pm
Imagine what the Gov and his cronies might do for Station Casinos of Las Vegas, Greg Sarris, and his "tribe" that never was, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria!
Whatever the politicians say, there are no other "sovereign nations" within the borders of the United States of America.
American Indians have no more rights than the rest of us--except when corrupt politicians give them some.
June 22, 2008 7:29:46 pm
Screw the casinos. Screw Arnie. A quick look at casino operations around the country will show that nothing good comes from gambling money. Any one that voted for expanded casino operations is a chump, look at Vegas or Atlantic City, would you like to live in either of these fine cities? Didn't think so.
Talk about a short sighted, guilt driven, half hearted, greed laden solution to compensating native Americans. The children of these "native americns" should be off at school(subsidized, if needed) instead of learning how to run a subsidized gambling operation, which will have zero long term benefit to this country.
Cali Casinos - Close all of them.
June 22, 2008 7:41:36 pm
Just a smaller scale... The Bush/Cheney Arabic TV station broadcasting in the middle east cost taxpayers over $650Million so far... there's no one in management that speaks Arabic! It gets about 2% of the market, Al-Jazera is the most popular. Arabs call it the Cheney Channel!
211 days of incompetents left.
Republicans say Democrats are tax and spend, Republicans are spend and borrow!
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