The time has come to hold our elected officials accountable to the laws that are supposed to protect communities that oppose tribal gambling expansion.

 

Gambling expansion can occur in many ways and the Santa Ynez Band is aggressively expanding.

 

  There are many ways to expand gambling. One way is to purchase and use off–reservation property to support the gaming facility. This form of expansion is subtle and insidious. Numbers of gambling patrons, previously limited by the size of the hotel and parking space on the reservation, are increased by housing them in off-reservation hotels (The Royal Scandinavian, RSI). Non-gaming space is moved off reservation to make room for more gaming devices (Federicos).  More patrons are brought into the casino by parking them off reservation.

 

Tribal minutes, April 18, 2007, published in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal:

 “We need three to four hundred hotel rooms on permanent basis.”

 

“The ‘A’ player is $800 and above, ‘B’ is between $500 and $800 and the ‘C’ player is between $250 and $500 a day. A typical casino visit is 6 hours. If you take a typical visit and add a hotel room, you get two days from the guest. Hotels make money on an average room rate of $120-$150 per room. Mr. Brents believes we could add significant incremental value to that. The hospitality industry in the valley should be controlled by the Tribe.” 

 

The way the Tribal State Gaming Compact reads, this use of off-reservation properties to support the gaming facility are violations of the compact. The California Gambling Control Commission (CGCC) is the agency that is supposed to be enforcing the compacts.

 

Clear determinations are hard to come by. In recent articles, Sam Cohen, the Santa Ynez Band attorney, stated that the CGCC had made a determination that there were no compact violations on the use of the off-reservation properties RSI and Federico’s. 

 

To set the record straight, the original response from the CGCC was the following: “We have carefully reviewed the information you have provided and have concluded that at this time no further action is required.”

 

“No further action is required” was a non-answer, in our opinion. We have heard enough about the CGCC to know that the agency is not staffed to enforce compacts.

 

For example, currently, Candace Cates filed a taxpayer’s law suit against the California Gambling Control Commission. “A state appeals court reinstated a lawsuit Thursday by a former state gambling commission agent, who says California has lost $330 million in five years by allowing Indian tribes to pay less than they should from slot machine revenue at casinos.” 

 

“Testimony from CGCC acknowledged that they didn’t know how the tribes were calculating their debts, lacked the staff needed to get information from the tribes and had audited only one of 28 tribes since 2002.” 

 

“This testimony is startling because the compact unambiguously defines the term ‘net win,’” McIntyre wrote. (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 7, 2007 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi)

 

Now, given this law suit testimony and other testimony by the CGCC that their agency is not staffed to enforce compacts, serious questions arise. Is the use of the RSI, Federicos and off reservation property for parking compact violations, or is “no further action required” because the CGCC is not staffed to enforce?  Someone must make a decision and put their name on the dotted line. 

 

It is surprising that the Santa Ynez Band would find efforts to clarify the law as a reason to ridicule the groups. Maybe P.O.L.O. and POSY are just not enlightened. Let’s see if we can get this straight. The California taxpayer granted Indian casino tribes a monopoly of hundreds of millions of non–taxed gambling dollars, still eligible to receive federal assistance, and influencing elected officials at all levels so that they can expand their gambling…yet the California taxpayer has no right to challenge this?

 

We don’t think so.

Our elected officials must be held accountable and give a real determination on what the research has shown so that we can all move forward. This includes answers as to why the compact and addendums on file with the state are signed by Edward Valencia in September and Oct. 1999, yet a copy of the compact and addendums available through the National Congress of American Indians is signed on the same dates by Vincent Armenta.

 

Is this how tribal governments do business, and is this legal? Or, are the politicians too busy trying to figure out how to cash in on the 250 million untaxed casino dollars? (Or more, remember they are a sovereign government and are self regulated.)

 

Given the confusion on the CGCC original response (“no action will be taken”), last week P.O.L.O. and POSY sent a follow up inquiry. The CGCC responded immediately: “Thank you for your e-mail. Since the issues you mention below have been brought to the attention of the Governor’s Office we will have no further response. Nor can we have any comment about the Cates case since it is still a pending litigation matter.”   

 

We await the determination by the governor.

To see copies of the compacts and all of the above referenced letters, go to www.polosyv.org

 

Kathy Cleary of P.O.L.O.

www.polosyv.org.

P.O. Box 936

Los Olivos, Ca. 93441

805-686-2808