Plan Would Let Tribes Put Casinos in Barstow

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced plans Friday that could allow two Indian tribes to open Las Vegas-style casinos in Barstow, far from their aboriginal land -- to the dismay of other tribes with gambling operations.

Under the tentative deals, the Big Lagoon band, from far Northern California, and the Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians of San Diego County would be able to open separate casinos, each with 2,250 slot machines. The city has encouraged the development as a way to boost its economy.

Schwarzenegger administration officials want to permit the Big Lagoon band to open a casino about 600 miles away from its rancheria, rather than have the tribe open a gambling palace on environmentally sensitive coastal land not far from state parks and in Humboldt County.

Southern California tribes with casinos were among those critical of the proposal.

“It is reservation shopping at its worst,” said Deron Marquez, chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, which owns a large casino just outside the San Bernardino city limits.

If the two bands install as many slots as allowed under the proposal, they will own casinos among the largest in the country. In exchange, the tribes would pay as much as 25% of the profits from slot machines and card games to the state -- an amount that could result in payments of between $23 million and $31 million a year. They also would provide payments to tribes that have no casinos.

The state began negotiating with Los Coyotes in part because the city of Barstow had struck a deal with the band to open a casino last year. At the state’s insistence, Los Coyotes agreed to allow Big Lagoon Rancheria to open a casino on the same site.

In a statement, Schwarzenegger called the agreements “a creative solution for avoiding the construction of a casino on California’s coast and alongside a state ecological preserve, while respecting the tribes’ federal right to engage in gaming.”

Kevin Siva, project manager for Los Coyotes and a member of the tribe’s governing council, hailed the compact, but said the tribes have several more hurdles, including winning federal approval to turn the land into reservation property and gaining state legislative approval.

He said Los Coyotes’ reservation covers 27,000 acres, is rugged and generally inaccessible, and could not have attracted enough customers because of its remote location. Representatives of Big Lagoon could not be reached for comment.

“It is great news for Barstow,” City Councilman Joe Gomez said, though he added that he thought other tribes also should be permitted to open casinos in Barstow.

Though Barstow is a small city, an estimated 60 million people travel through it each year, many of them on their way to Las Vegas. The city hopes to lure some of those tourists to stop at what developers envision will be a $160-million resort.

The tribes would pay the city a combined $6.5 million a year, almost matching Barstow’s annual budget of $10.5 million, a city official said Friday.

The deal is being financed by Marian Ilitch of Michigan, who originally made her money in the Little Caesars pizza chain and now owns a major casino in Detroit.

Former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown is among the consultants who have pushed the deal on behalf of the tribes and Ilitch’s partnership, BarWest LLC.

The partnership donated $26,000 to the California Republican Party last year, and $5,000 to a campaign committee backing Schwarzenegger’s initiatives on the Nov. 8 ballot. Those amounts are tiny compared to the millions that tribes with casinos have given to candidates and causes in recent years.

The governor proposed the deals one day after lawmakers refused to consider compacts that seek to authorize far more modest casinos on the reservations of two other tribes.

Earlier this year, the Legislature blocked a compact that would have permitted a tribe to open a Las Vegas-style casino in the Bay Area city of San Pablo.

On Friday, several lawmakers expressed doubts about the latest deals.

The chairmen of legislative committees that oversee gambling, Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) and Assemblyman Jerome Horton (D-Inglewood), said they would hold hearings in the coming months to analyze the deals.

“Members of the Legislature have lost confidence in the governor’s negotiators’ understanding of the issues,” Horton said.

Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine also expressed doubts, saying that when voters approved Indian gambling, they assumed casinos would be built on tribes’ existing reservations.

Tom Shields, spokesman for the BarWest partnership, dismissed the opposition, saying the San Manuel Band and other Southern California casino tribes are worried about competition.

“Once a tribe has approval [for a casino], they try to protect themselves against competition,” Shields said. “I think the Legislature can see through that.”

Dismissing such claims, Marquez said he would support tribes opening casinos in Barstow if they had direct ties to the area. He noted that the Chemehuevi has such ties. Though the Chemehuevi is engaged in talks with Barstow, and has been involved in talks with the Schwarzenegger administration, no agreement has been reached.

“We oppose anybody coming into our backyard and taking land into trust,” Marquez said. “We view it as two foreign governments coming in. We plan on fighting every step of the way.”

The California Tribal Business Alliance, a group of tribes in Northern and Southern California with large casinos, has been allied with the governor, but also is skeptical of the deal.

The organization opposes allowing tribes to open casinos far from their aboriginal land.

Big Lagoon is “a North Coast tribe and always [was] and never had any governmental control over land in the Barstow area,” said Alison Harvey, the group’s executive director.

In a telephone news conference to explain the deal, Dan Kolkey, the governor’s lead negotiator, noted that Big Lagoon had sued the state seeking to force it into approving the compact on the environmentally sensitive land.

Though stopping short of saying the state would lose in court, Kolkey, a former state appellate court judge, said it was “a very risky piece of litigation.” He added that the compacts would not clear the way for other tribes to open casinos far from their ancestral land.

“If these compacts have any precedent,” Kolkey said, “it is that this governor is going to be creative in managing locations for tribal gaming so as to avoid environmental disasters.”