California tribes hit the jackpot with gaming vote
WHETHER OR NOT a casino ever occupies this site, Mary Ann Martin stands to become a rich woman. (Globe Staff Photo / Evan Richman)
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By Michael Rezendes, Globe Staff, 12/11/00
 OACHELLA, Calif. -- In a rundown mobile home at the edge of this dusty city of Mexican resort workers, a 35-year-old single mother of three is about to be showered with fabulous wealth.
As the sole surviving adult member of the Augustine Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians, Mary Ann Martin has received state and federal approval for an Indian casino. The posh facility is slated to include a major conference hotel, an 18-hole golf course, and a retail center -- all on 500 acres of brush behind Martin's home, which is officially known as the Cahuilla reservation.
Even if a pending development deal falls through and plans for the casino are scrapped, the highly secretive Martin could still receive up to $1.1 million a year from other Indian tribes under an agreement awarding that amount to California tribes that don't open casinos.
"It's pretty amazing that one person could end up with all that money," says Susan Williams, Coachella's chief city planner.
Welcome to the world of Indian gambling, California style. In the nine months since voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment giving the state's 107 tribes an exclusive right to operate Las Vegas-style casinos, the Golden State has been rocked by unforeseen fallout from an imminent Indian gambling explosion in which revenues are expected to dwarf the riches raked in by Connecticut tribes.
California Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat and the recipient of generous Indian campaign contributions, has promised residents "a limited extension" of Indian casino gambling under a state compact he signed with 60 tribes.
But the agreement has been attacked from several sides by analysts who say it has opened the floodgates to a new era of gambling without requiring tribes to account for their operations or abide by state and federal environmental protection laws.
For instance, Davis has said the compact gives the tribes the right to operate a total of 45,000 Las Vegas-style slot machines. But a nonpartisan legislative analyst's office has pegged the number at 113,000.
Adding to the confusion -- while underscoring the secrecy afforded to Indian gaming operations -- is a $34.5 million check delivered by tribes to state officials who say they don't know what the money is for.
Presumably, some of it is aimed at the fund for Indian tribes that won't operate casinos, in most cases because they're located in isolated areas. And some of it probably comes from a $1,250 fee tribes are required to pay for each new slot machine they buy. But no one knows for sure.
"The governor negotiated a compact that has no accounting and no oversight," says I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School and an occasional consultant to Indian gaming tribes. "The fact of the matter is, there's no way to know how many slot machines there are in the state."
In the meantime, controversial Indian casinos are being planned for a site near the entrance of Yosemite National Park, on a road that meanders through Sonoma County's rural wine country, and at a variety of other locations where neighbors are joining a burgeoning citizen movement fighting the Indian gaming pact hammered out by Davis.
"We're opposed to a compact that was negotiated in secret ... without any public hearings," says Cheryl Schmit, co-director of Stand Up for California.
The state's Indian gaming rush began gathering steam in the late 1990s, when quasi-legal Indian gaming operations began pumping more than $100 million into the election of a sympathetic governor, two ballot initiatives, and a massive lobbying effort.
Capping the campaign, voters in March approved Proposition 1A, the California Indian Self Reliance Initiative, after an intensive media campaign that touted Indian gaming as a vital route to tribal self-sufficiency.
But ever since, budding resentment toward Indian gaming has centered in part on the disproportionate political influence wielded by tribes flooding the Legislature with campaign contributions.
"The politicians are literally falling over themselves to do what the Indians want because their campaign contributions are limitless," says Bob Coffin, a San Diego attorney who has been coordinating opposition to expansion of a casino run by the Barona Band of Mission Indians.
More fevered objections have stemmed from an array of specific proposals for Indian casinos -- some by tribes with fewer than 100 members -- near residential communities in semirural areas.
And much of that opposition can be found in San Diego County, where three tribes are planning major expansions of existing casinos, and nine additional tribes have won approvals for more.
At times the controversy has been spiced with aesthetic concerns and class conflict. Twenty miles east of San Diego, for instance, the 56-member Jamul tribe has drawn fire from local residents for proposing to build a high-rise casino and hotel on a six-acre reservation bordered by horse farms and gated estates.
Meanwhile, a proposal by the Rincon Band of San Luiseno Mission Indians for a Harrah's casino in the northern part of the county has won local applause because of the hundreds of jobs it will create.
"The economy isn't wonderful everywhere," notes Marge Smith, executive secretary of the Valley Center Chamber of Commerce.
Nevertheless, the growing argument over the spread of Indian gambling in a decidedly arid region also hinges on tougher questions about water rights and uncertainty over who will pay for road improvements necessary to accommodate casino traffic, as well as increased police and fire services.
Exacerbating these concerns are recent Indian assertions that the compact agreed to by Davis doesn't require them to abide by state and federal environmental protection laws.
To dramatize opponents' concerns, Coffin likes to take visitors to the new golf course at the expanding Barona casino in the northern part of the county.
The 18-hole course features five man-made lakes that rely on local ground water supplies. Meanwhile, wells that supply water to dozens of homes in the surrounding hills are running dry or failing to produce water at all.
"What rankles those of us in the non-Indian communities is the fact that the compact contains no provisions to compensate people affected by these casinos," Coffin says. "We really have nowhere to go."
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