A Yuba County group that opposes the Enterprise Rancheria casino wants to hire a Washington, D.C., lawyer.

The group, Citizens for a Better Way, will hold a fund-raiser Sunday, hoping to come up with $5,000 to pay for a retainer.
The Butte County tribe is seeking federal approval to place 40 acres in trust on Forty Mile Road in the county's sports and entertainment zone.

The tribe has proposed a $90 million hotel-casino complex, but Supervisor Dan Logue, a project opponent, said Monday there's more at stake.

He suggested that the tribe may eventually be in a position to control about 1,000 acres, including the current racetrack site.

"This is the real fear we have," he said. "I think it's a legitimate concern. I don't want to see businesses in Marysville, Linda and Olivehurst have to compete with businesses that don't pay any sales taxes or property taxes."

 
Last December, Yuba County supervisors approved a memorandum of understanding with the tribe that will bring the county $73 million during the first 16 years of the casino's operation.

Attorney Guy Martin, who has handled casino cases across the country, has agreed to speak to the group during its Sunday event.

"California is the most free-wheeling," he said, comparing this state to the rest of the country when it comes to Indian gaming.

Martin said he's talked with Logue but isn't familiar with the Enterprise Rancheria situation.

"They're very fact-intensive kind of situations," he said. "I'll have to learn about the facts before I can speak more intelligently."

According to Martin, "What I say in general is every community, when confronted with a proposal for Indian gaming, needs to decide how it feels about the proposal."

He said communities either are against the casino, somewhat open to the proposal or "they're indecisive and caught in a situation where they can't make a meaningful decision. That's the worst position to be in. You become a victim of circumstances."

Communities that don't want casinos "have a fair number of leverage points to get that result," he said. "If the community wants to work out something with the tribe, it's possible to do that. Communities sell themselves short. They get to a situation where they feel the Indian casino is an inevitability, and they wind up accepting that inevitability when there's no need to do that."

Martin said his job "is to convince them they have alternatives."

He noted that "I haven't signed up yet" with the Yuba County anti-casino group.

"I've talked with Dan, and I agreed to speak to this group because I was going to be out there anyway," Martin said.

Martin's law firm, Perkins Coie LLP, says in its promotional material that it has "constructed a specialized practice to serve communities, offering legal expertise, political capability, substantive knowledge of Indian law and policy, along with a commitment to represent the legitimate interests of local governments and citizens."