Tribe may overplay its hand in push for gambling pacts

It’s a measure of how rich some Indians have become off gambling that one tribe has a spare $20 million to spend on pressuring legislators into making it even richer.

“Pressure” is the polite word.

“Bullying” also is being bandied.

As in: “Bully tactics aren’t going to work.” That’s the vow of Assemblyman Alberto Torrico (D-Newark), chairman of the Committee on Governmental Organization, which will pass judgment on compacts allowing five Southern California tribes to more than triple their slot machines, from 10,000 to 32,500.

To which Patrick Dorinson, spokesman for the pressuring tribe -- the Morongo Band of Mission Indians -- responds: “We’re not trashing any legislators. We’re exercising our 1st Amendment rights to communicate with the public and ask for their support. I don’t see how that’s bullying....

“To accuse Indian tribes of ‘bullying’ after a couple hundred years of genocide is a little outrageous.”

Yes, it’s getting tense between some old friends: Democratic politicians and Indian tribes that are big campaign donors.

Problem is, this fight also involves some even older, more loyal friends of Democrats: organized labor.

The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union objects to the compacts, contending that they make it difficult to organize workers. The union also argues that, under the pacts, casino employees are not guaranteed workers’ compensation protection or enforcement of health and safety standards. The tribes dispute all this.

The Democrats’ loudest public argument against the compacts is that they don’t allow for an independent audit of slot machine profits, which determine the state’s payoff.

“That’s absolutely false,” says the Morongo attorney, George Forman. “The state has the right to examine all casino records upon which financial statements are based.”

This is for lawyers to decide and negotiators to haggle over.

Here, let’s back up.

California voters probably thought they’d atoned for any inherited guilt about genocide and land thievery when they agreed in 1998, and again in 2000, to allow Indians to build Vegas-style gambling casinos on their rural reservations.

The idea was to lift the Indians from abject poverty and give tribes the means to provide the basics: housing, healthcare, education.... Few voters probably envisioned a full employment act for political consultants.

Each tribe would have to negotiate a gambling compact with the governor and have it approved by the Legislature. Roughly half the tribes did, and some hit jackpots.

The Morongo take, for example, is high enough to pay each adult member roughly $15,000 to $20,000 per month, according to a recent Economist article, which quoted a tribal leader.

Indian casino gambling already is an estimated $7-billion annual industry in California even without the pending compacts.

Actually, at issue are amendments to old compacts. The amendments allow for the increased slots.

Schwarzenegger negotiated the amendments last year, but submitted them to the Legislature too late to be acted upon. More precisely, there wasn’t enough time to resolve labor’s complaints. Four tribes retaliated against Democrats by helping to reelect five Republicans to the Assembly.

The governor resubmitted the pacts this year with the argument that they’re moneymakers for the state. The tribes would send Sacramento up to 25% of each new slot’s profits. Schwarzenegger initially calculated the state share at $506 million for the fiscal year starting July 1. But 10 days ago he lowered the projection to $314 million, partly because the compacts still hadn’t been approved by the Legislature.

Each day they’re not ratified after May 15, the governor warned, the state will lose $1.3 million.

The five compacts, plus one for an isolated tribe on the North Coast, breezed through the Senate on April 19 -- and hit a wall in the Assembly.

Five days later, the Morongo tribe began its pressure campaign, committing up to $20 million.

You may have seen the TV ad. A bald eagle soars while a narrator intones: “California and ... tribes. Together we soar. Gov. Schwarzenegger and California’s Senate agree. New compacts will bring California hundreds of millions of dollars ... to help balance the budget, improve education and provide quality healthcare. Now is the time for the Assembly to act.... Call your Assembly member.”

Voters in Assembly Democrats’ districts are receiving literature and phone calls urging the lawmakers to get off the dime. Additionally, constituents of some Senate Democrats who voted for the pacts are getting mailers praising the lawmaker for being “a problem solver.”

It’s hardball with beanbags. Muscle flexing intimidation, rather than pugnacious bullying. So far.

It’s the next possible move that agitates Assembly Democrats. There have been rumors that if the compacts aren’t ratified, the Morongo Band will dump millions into trying to kill a proposal on the February ballot to relax legislative term limits. This is a measure dear to the Democrats’ hearts.

“That’s just another canard,” says Dorinson. “I’ve never heard that discussion once.”

That’s fortunate, because I can’t imagine anything that would anger legislators more, even Republicans.

“This tribe has been given bad advice by a whole cadre of high-priced consultants,” asserts Torrico, a former labor attorney. He says other tribes have been trying to compromise behind the scenes.

The Morongo band is pushing too hard against politicians who are prone to push back -- who can’t be seen as bending to bullies and need some space to help their longtime labor allies.

Here’s a good bet: The Morongo compact will be the very last one ratified -- if it is ratified.

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Reach the columnist at george.skelton@latimes.com.