Indian Casino Measures Stall in Legislature

A suddenly recalcitrant Legislature refused Thursday, on its final day in session, to pass Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s major expansion of Indian gambling and his proposed changes to California’s prison system.

After months of unusual cooperation with the Republican governor, Democratic leaders put off votes, probably until next year, on deals with four wealthy Indian tribes that hope to more than double the size of their casinos, and one with a poor tribe that has no casino. A deal for a sixth tribe, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians of Palm Springs, passed the Senate but failed in the Assembly.

“Members of my Democratic caucus are pretty irritated that all these compacts came to us at such a late time in the legislative session, and folks really don’t want to deal with this,” said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles).

Noting that 25 Assembly Democrats are leaving office because of term limits, Nunez said: “There’s folks who quite frankly don’t feel compelled to take a vote on this and would rather just pass this along to the next generation of legislators.”

A package of bills pushed by Schwarzenegger to overhaul the prison system died Thursday evening. It included proposals to build two prisons, add beds at existing lockups and move nonviolent women out of state prisons to facilities in their communities.

The Legislature plowed through hundreds of bills Thursday, passing landmark legislation backed by the governor that would restrict industrial emissions of greenhouse gases, ban drivers from holding cellphones and divide $2.9 billion among troubled schools.

Democrats hailed the global-warming bill as a historic effort that will make California the center of green energy technology. Most Republicans decried it as a “job killer” that will drive businesses out of California and do nothing to ease global warming.

The most dramatic battle involved the Indian casinos, and it represented one of the few defeats in the Legislature for wealthy tribes in recent years.

Schwarzenegger had no immediate response to the failure of the casino and prison measures. But he issued a statement saying: “This has been an incredibly productive legislative session, one of the most productive in decades.”

In the closing days, Schwarzenegger delivered the compacts authorizing 22,500 more slot machines in California -- an increase of more than a third over the roughly 60,000 machines currently at Indian casinos -- mostly in the southern part of the state.

In exchange, the tribes would have paid the state tens of millions of dollars annually, depending on the size of their gambling operations.

That set off a fierce lobbying battle in the Democratic-controlled Legislature between two of the party’s biggest backers -- tribes, which are major campaign donors, and organized labor, which supplies Democrats with campaign cash and delivers votes come election time.

The Agua Caliente bill fell short of the necessary 41-vote majority in the Assembly, where the tally was 35 in favor, 22 opposed and 22 not voting.

“I’m sincerely disappointed,” tribal Chairman Richard M. Milanovich said in a written statement. “In the end, we just weren’t able to overcome the distortions and misrepresentations by organized labor.”

Led by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees, known as Unite-HERE, labor made a major push to sway Democratic legislators, contending that the tribes have blocked their efforts to organize workers -- charges that tribal leaders dispute. The union represents Nevada casino workers.

“Frankly, they’re making tons of money, and they can afford to pay their workers,” said Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood), who led an effort among fellow Democrats to oppose the compacts.

Combined, the five Southern California tribes earned about $1.7 billion from their slot machines in 2005, according to information released by the Schwarzenegger administration. Koretz and other legislators noted that the tribes are major spenders in California political campaigns.

Republican legislators backed the gambling deals and hoped to use the vote to gain a political advantage over Democrats in the November elections and beyond.

“The way the Democrats have treated the Indians is shameful,” said Assemblyman Russ Bogh (R-Cherry Valley), whose Inland Empire district includes tribal casinos. “The Indians learned this week who their friends are.”

In addition to the Agua Caliente, the Southern California tribes include the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the San Manuel Band of Serrano Indians near San Bernardino, the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians near Temecula and the Sycuan Band of Kumeyaay Indians of San Diego County.

In Northern California near Klamath, the state’s largest tribe and one of its poorest, the Yurok, had hoped for approval of a 99-slot casino.

Lawmakers on Tuesday approved a deal permitting the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian nation to open a casino on its land off Interstate 8 in California’s southeast corner, at the Arizona border. The Quechan hope to have up to 1,100 slot machines, a hotel, golf course and water park.

Meanwhile, as lawmakers debated dozens of bills into the evening Thursday, Schwarzenegger’s prisons package languished. Like lobbyists for the tribes and scores of other interest groups, lobbyists for the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. spent hours this week crowded outside the Assembly and Senate chambers, buttonholing legislators.

The prisons bills represented a slimmed-down version of the $6-billion package Schwarzenegger proposed in June when he called a special legislative session on the prison system. The governor had warned that overcrowding had become so severe a federal judge might order the release of thousands of inmates.

But Democrats, criticizing the governor’s offerings, junked those bills and responded with four of their own, with a far more modest price tag of $918 million. One measure included the governor’s proposed transfer of 4,500 female convicts, while others would let the administration add 5,340 beds at 11 existing prisons and begin planning for new medical centers for inmates.

The Senate approved the bills late Wednesday. But the Assembly balked.

“We haven’t had an opportunity to vet all this legislation and to think thoroughly about what is the best way to improve a failing prison system, which we have here in California,” Nunez said.

“These are bad bills,” said Lance Corcoran, a spokesman for the guards union. “They are window dressing, some sleight-of-hand gimmicks designed to allow everybody to go home and say everything’s hunky-dory when it is not.”

*

Times staff writer Jenifer Warren contributed to this report.

*

dan.morain@latimes.com

nancy.vogel@latimes.com