How Far Will Gambling Go?

Bay Area officials were shocked when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last year that he had negotiated a compact with the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians to open a giant 5,000-slot-machine casino in San Pablo, twice as many slots as in any other tribal casino in California and more than in any casino in Las Vegas.

Worse still, the casino was smack in the San Francisco Bay metro area, violating the promise that casinos would be limited to ancestral tribal lands in rural areas. The protest over the size was so strong that Schwarzenegger quickly renegotiated the compact to allow only 2,500 machines. Still, the controversy has prompted the Legislature to put off approving the deal.

The Lytton Band does not have a reservation in San Pedro. It bought a card club there and, thanks to legislation pushed through Congress in 2000 by Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), was able to claim it as tribal property. That gave it the right to renovate the club into a casino with slot machines.

Now, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is sponsoring legislation to undo Miller’s measure and require the Lytton Band to go through the regular bureaucratic process of having the card club property declared as tribal land. This requires the consent of both the U.S. secretary of the Interior and the governor. Other tribes are seeking to use Miller’s loophole to open urban casinos of their own. Congress should pass the Feinstein bill, and the president should sign it into law.

Feinstein’s office says her measure would not prevent the band from opening a casino on the San Pablo property, which is adjacent to busy Interstate 80, about seven miles north of Berkeley; it would only have to follow the same procedures faced by other tribes.

Some politically powerful Southern California tribes are supporting Feinstein. Chairman Mark Macarro of the Pechanga Band of Temecula argued that the Miller legislation “provides an unfair advantage for tribes that have circumvented federal and state procedure in acquiring tribal lands.”

A larger issue is the lack of state guidelines on gambling. When Californians voted to allow tribal casinos, they were promised there would be only moderate growth of gambling on rural tribal lands. But casino gambling has mushroomed to an estimated $6-billion-a-year business that is inching closer to cities and enjoys only a modicum of regulation by the state. Californians deserve to know if there is any end in sight.