Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and other California lawmakers are aggressively trying to head off development bids by struggling Indian bands and wishful investors that continue to eye the San Francisco Bay Area as a potential Emerald City for casino gambling.

The governor, who has declared he will tolerate no urban casinos on his watch, is seeking to quash the latest plan by remote Guidiville Band of Pomo Indian from Ukiah in Mendocino County.

The tribe is seeking to acquire a former naval yard in the city of Richmond to build a lavish casino resort that would ferry gamblers across the water from downtown San Francisco.

In a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs this month, Andrea Lynn Hoch, the governor’s legal affairs secretary, declared that the project “violates Governor Schwarzenegger’s proclamation opposing urban casinos”.

The governor’s effort is intended to stop the BIA from taking land into trust at the Point Molate Naval Fuel Depot on behalf of the tribe.

But the Guidiville Band’s quest to build a 1,100-room hotel and a casino with up to 4,000 slot machines underscores persistent efforts by gambling interests to secure a place in the San Francisco market despite vehement political opposition, including from rival tribes operating remote Northern California casinos. 

The Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians from Northern California’s Lake County is also seeking approval for a major casino project along the Richmond Parkway, a key San Francisco-area commuter route.

Another tribe, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, is working to build a casino near Rohnert Park, about 40 minutes north of San Francisco on U.S. Highway 101.

“For the tribes, there is really no downside in trying,” said George Forman, a leading California tribal lawyer who doesn’t represent either Indian band.

“The tribes aren’t putting money into this. The developers are. If you’re a tribe and have no land or the land you have isn’t suited for anything, why wouldn’t you keep on pushing?

“But these types of moves are not receiving universal acclaim within the tribal community. To see another tribe leap frog over them and go to town doesn’t sit well with them.”

Forman said talk of any Bay Area gambling development stirs alarm for small casino tribes such as the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and the Robinson Rancheria.

The tribes count on a steady stream of gamblers that drive up to two and a half hours from San Francisco or Oakland to their rural gambling establishments in Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties.

Upstream Pointe Molate LLC, the Guidiville project developer, one partner is the wealthy Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, operator of the Cache Creek Casino Resort near Sacramento. The Yolo County tribe, recently known as the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, also backed a failed 2004 plan for a major East Bay casino.

In arguing to the BIA against the Guidiville project in an October 12 letter, the Schwarzenegger administration quoted 2005 testimony from Mark Macarro, chairman of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians and a key proponent in 1998 and 2000 initiatives that legalised tribal gambling in California.

“During the time those propositions [5 and 1A] were considered, tribes in California pledged that the passage… would not result in the proliferation of urban gaming, but would be confined to a tribe’s existing reservation lands,” Macarro said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Urban Affairs.

Yet in 2000, area Democratic Representative George Miller slipped language into an omnibus congressional bill to give the landless Lytton Band of Pomo Indians the right to buy land in San Pablo, east of Oakland and San Francisco on Interstate-80.

In 2004, Schwarzenegger approved a compact to allow the tribe to build a casino with up to 5,000 slot machines. Amid vehement opposition, the deal never passed the Legislature. Schwarzenegger famously reversed himself and issued his no urban casinos edict.

Lytton currently operates a Class II facility at the city with about 1,100 machines.
 
In March, Feinstein passed legislation in the Senate to prevent the tribe from expanding the casino. Her bill also barred Lytton from operating Class III games – without obtain the nearly impossible uniform consent of the governor, the US secretary of the interior, the San Pablo community and nearby tribes.

“The United State Senate has taken an important step toward insuring that the East Bay will not become home to large-scale, Nevada-style gambling,” Feinstein said.

Two East Bay lawmakers, Democratic state senators Loni Hancock and Mark DeSaulnier came out against the Guidiville casino land acquisition in an October 22 letter to the city of Richmond and the BIA. “There is no community consensus in support of this project,” Hancock wrote.

But Forman said it could be a worthy gamble for casino speculators to try to push the project through despite the opposition.

He said the BIA has authority to put land into trust for the tribe whether or not Schwarzenegger, or any future California governor, supports the plan.

The tribe could then sue the state if it refuses to negotiate a gambling compact “in good faith”.

“This is something unlikely to happen in the immediate future,” he said of the casino development. “But I assume the proponents think that there is enough money at stake to see if maybe it will happen.”