Race to Beat Slot Deadline Frustrates County Officials

The repercussions of a state gambling agreement are echoing off the hills of this oak-speckled valley of horse farms and vineyards as yet another Indian casino rushes a building project to avoid losing its right to operate lucrative new slot machines.

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians has angered Santa Barbara County officials by putting up walls for a 21,000-square-foot temporary building and planning a five-story parking garage in a rural area where nothing else approaches that size.

“This is just totally out of context in a rural valley of 20,000 people,” said Supervisor Gail Marshall. “We have never even seen plans for the parking garage or the 209,000-square-foot building they are planning to construct” within two years to replace the current hodgepodge of casino buildings.

Santa Barbara County leaders are not alone in feeling frustrated. From San Diego in the south to Del Norte in the north, county officials are seeing a construction boom on federally protected reservation lands that are largely exempt from county building regulations.

In places like Santa Ynez, the pace has been quickened by a looming state deadline for installing slot machines.

Negotiated by Gov. Gray Davis in 1999 and approved by voters in Proposition 1A, state gaming compacts set a May 15 deadline for when tribes must have as many as 2,000 Las Vegas-style slots operational or risk losing licenses for the slots to other tribes.

Although the intended goal of the deadline was to set a limit to the number of slot machines in the state, it has resulted in a building frenzy. There are 60 gaming tribes in California, and only the biggest casinos have been able to avoid new construction for added slot machines.

“Tribes have been participating in the draw for licenses before they even have any place to put the slot machines,” said Cheryl Schmit, co-director of the gambling watchdog group Stand Up For California. “Then they have to scramble to get them in and working.”

The Chumash have 875 slot machines operational now in a casino that also features bingo and card games, but the tribe wants to add 1,125 for the maximum of 2,000 by May 15. Slot machines account for an estimated 80% to 85% of the profits at Indian casinos, and each machine is expected to bring in revenue of $200 to $500 daily, studies of out-of-state Indian casinos have shown.

Although work on the Chumash’s temporary building is still underway, tribe officials are confident that it will be finished by the May 15 deadline.

“Our licenses are safe,” said Vincent Armenta, chairman of the business committee for the 162 members of the Chumash tribe.

Although the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unanimously opposes the new construction, Armenta said the Chumash have done all that is required to address environmental concerns. He cited the reservation’s status as a “sovereign nation” when it comes to specific planning questions.

“I don’t want to say anything harmful,” Armenta said in a recent interview at the casino, which is just two miles east of the Danish-style tourist village of Solvang. “But years ago, when we didn’t have running water and sewers at the reservation, nobody in the local government really was too concerned about us.”

What annoys many of the tribe’s neighbors is the project’s piecemeal nature.

Santa Barbara officials have joined elected leaders from other counties in asking the governor, the attorney general and the California Gambling Control Commission, to stop or slow casino projects. So far, help has not been forthcoming.

“In my district alone, I have five tribes going into gaming,” said Bill Horn, head of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and representative of the northern end of the county. In all, the county has 11 tribes either adding onto or building new casinos to meet the slot machine deadline.

“Many times when we comment on their plans, we don’t even get a response back,” Horn said. The county’s only recourse is applying environmental rules to those parts of the project, such as driveways and water hookups, where the tribes are encroaching on county property.

The gaming compacts do require tribes to make “a good-faith effort” to address state and national environmental requirements.

“What happens if there is no good-faith effort?” asked Rene Stwora-Hail, who has served as acting chief counsel for just a month at the newly formed gambling commission. “The bottom line is: We wish it was better defined.”

It is the artificial nature of the May 15 deadline that is rushing many of the building projects, but Stwora-Hail said the commission has no intention yet of trying to reset the deadline. She acknowledges that the panel may not even have the authority to do so.

“In a perfect world, there would be an open dialogue between the tribes and the local governments,” said Hilary McLean , a spokeswoman for Davis. “However, the compact does provide some recourse in case that does not work out.”

There is a dispute resolution clause in the compacts, but legal experts say the question of “good faith” will probably be hashed out long after the projects in question are built.

The Santa Ynez Chumash instituted gaming in 1994 and, in a tale told up and down the state, quickly improved the economic status of tribal members. The casino is the largest employer in the Santa Ynez Valley and expects to employ 570 people when the new construction is done.

The Chumash casino is unlike many others in that it has little competition in its region. Located on the Central Coast’s only reservation, it pulls gamblers from Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and Kern counties.

The word “Chumash” referred originally to a family of languages used in an estimated 150 villages between Monterey and Long Beach when Europeans arrived in California, said John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum.

Members of the Santa Ynez Band are the only federally recognized Chumash, even though they are a small fraction of the state Chumash population. They are descendants of Indians forced from their land in 1855 with the secularization of the Old Mission Santa Ines. The band was moved to the current 127-acre reservation on a creek bed.

“The Santa Ynez Chumash are federally recognized today because they were treated so badly back then,” Johnson said. “The Chumash of Ventura and Santa Barbara did not have their land stolen, but they eventually sold it. Now they have no land.”