Attorney Guy Martin speaks on the ills of casino gambling during a fundraiser put on Sunday in Wheatland by the Citizens for A Better Way to oppose the Enterprise Rancheria casino proposed for construction in south Yuba County.

More than 50 people gathered at a Wheatland residence Sunday to raise funds for an attorney to battle a Butte County Indian tribe's efforts to build a casino in Yuba County.

The fundraiser was organized by Citizens for A Better Way to help stop Enterprise Rancheria from constructing a casino on Forty Mile Road. The tribe is seeking 40 acres of land in trust through the federal government.
"This is a long, tough, uncertain road to where you want to go," said Guy Martin, a Washington D.C. lawyer who has expertise in Indian affairs.

He said if residents want to fight the tribe, they have to do so on legal grounds, finding every detail that's flawed and challenge the tribe on that.

"What you have to do when you are dealing with a potential casino is take any niche, any hand-hold you can find, any legal hand-hold, and you have to maximize leverage" in keeping that hand-hold, Martin said.

He gave an example of a prior client, in this case an Indian tribe that was fighting another tribe to keep it from building a casino in its back yard.

 
A leverage opportunity for the client came when the other tribe commissioned an environmental assessment report, Martin said.

His law firm hired biological and other experts to find every fact they could find to show the casino's adverse effects on the surrounding community.

Even though the Yuba County board of supervisors last December approved a memorandum of understanding that the tribe would bring in $73 million during the casino's first 16 years of operation, the battle he said hasn't been lost.

He advised finding ways to legally challenge the MOU. He also said the "biggest handicap" casino opponents face is getting the county board on the other side of the issue.

"It's a long, hard, difficult, uncertain road," Martin reminded them, adding that the process may take two, three or more years to turn away investors.

Cheryl Schmit, who has been involved in tribal gaming issues, said the tribe has no compact with the California governor, nor a gaming ordinance with the National Indian Gaming Commission, nor a land in trust, which are required before a tribe builds a casino.

She said the supervisors in December rushed through their vote and the community members didn't have a say in the process.

"This has never been a done deal," she said.

Supervisor Dan Logue said the casino will affect businesses, and the county will lose revenues in sale and property taxes.

"Do we want to give away prime, No. 1, industrial land in Yuba County? I don't want to do that," Logue said. "There has been a lot of misinformation."

The coming of the casino, he said, has impacts that go beyond Yuba County.

"This is David versus Goliath, and I hope you are ready for the battle of Goliath. We are going to war all the way with these people," he said.