Final Decision Due; Challenge Hinted : 2 Firms Pared From Bid to Run Barona Bingo
Indians on the Barona Indian Reservation near Lakeside took the first step Saturday toward resuming high-stakes bingo games that were halted in April after a rift between operators of the games and members of the Barona tribal council over lack of profits.
Four formal proposals to operate the Barona bingo games were presented Saturday at a tribal group meeting, and, according to tribal vice chairman Robert Welch, two firms were chosen as finalists and two were eliminated. Welch said a final decision will be made at a similar meeting Saturday.
The selection process to choose a management company came after a federal court judge’s decision last month that the tribe’s contract with American Management and Amusement Inc. was invalid. The contract to operate big-payoff bingo on the reservation was never approved by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, and therefore was not valid, Judge Howard Turrentine ruled.
Several AMA employees later were found guilty of diverting profits from the game by using “shills,” persons planted in the bingo audience, who were declared winners of the larger payoffs. Stewart Siegel, bingo manager at the time, admitted that he had rigged games so that nearly $100,000 in prizes were bled off by use of the shills. Siegel is awaiting sentencing.
Catherine Holsbo, a tribal council member, said that Saturday’s action eliminating two of the four proposals “will certainly be challenged” by members who did not agree with the decision.
She said that the meeting had occurred before the period for the AMA to appeal the federal court ruling had elapsed and that other legal violations had occurred that made Saturday’s meeting actions void.
One of the groups presenting a proposal at Saturday’s session was headed by Kathy Thaxton, a former San Diego police officer assigned to the criminal intelligence team that investigated the Barona reservation bingo games. Thaxton and another police officer who participated in the investigation resigned after it became known that they were seeking the contract to manage the bingo operations.
No information was available on the other three candidates.
The tribe owns a $3 million bingo hall, which was built by AMA on the reservation. The tribe hopes to resume the high-stakes games that draw hundreds of players from the San Diego area within the next few months, Welch said.
He said that after selection of a single management group, probably at next Saturday’s full tribal meeting, officials will begin negotiations over terms of the contract.
Bingo games held off the federal reservation sites are limited to $250 payoffs under state and local regulations, but the payoff limits do not apply on the federal reservation. Some Indian bingo games carry prizes of $10,000 and more. Bingo currently is played at the Rincon and Sycuan Indian reservations in San Diego County.
