SACRAMENTO- Last August, after months of negotiations, Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a lucrative new gambling agreement for
the Sycuan band on the night before lawmakers - who must ratify the
deal- were set to adjourn for the year.
But in announcing the compact that offers the El Cajon tribe up to
5,000 slot machines, the governor left something out.
The agreement authorized a second
casino on recently acquired land that is
not part of the tribe's reservation and not
yet eligible for gaming. That, some now
say, amounts to an off-reservation casino
like those that have stirred controversy
elsewhere.
Graphic:
Sycuan has carefully positioned the
potential casino site so that it could be
annexed to the reservation and become
eligible for gaming, but that may not
satisfy federal officials who must
approve the compact.
Sycuan properties
Aides to Schwarzenegger have been unable to explain why the governor
would pre-approve a large new casino on land not yet eligible for
gaming when he remains steadfastly opposed to adding a much smaller
parcel to the Jamul reservation to accommodate a planned casino in a
similar rural setting not far away.
Sycuan's compact stalled last year and is pending before the
Legislature. Pat Riggs, a 49-year Dehesa Valley resident who lives not
far from the tribe's bustling casino, believes she understands why
Schwarzenegger signed it.
"Communities are being walked on in order to balance the governor's
budget," said Riggs, alluding to five major new gambling compacts the
governor signed last August. The deals collectively offer 22,500
additional slots to a handful of the state's richest tribes.
The administration projects $506 million a year for the state from those
deals, although the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office said it could
be years, if ever, before the state realizes anything close to that from the
agreements for Sycuan, Pechanga of Temecula and three other tribes.
Nonetheless, Schwarzenegger called the Sycuan compact "a good deal
for the tribe, the local community and the state."
"I believe tribal gaming compacts are about more than just monetary
provisions," the governor said in a statement announcing Sycuan's deal.
"The agreement provides protections for both workers and patrons,
provides mitigation for off-reservation impacts of gaming, and protects
the environment."
Second-casino option
Darrel Ng, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger, noted that Sycuan's 1999
compact authorized two casinos, a standard provision in the first round
of gambling agreements negotiated by then-Gov. Gray Davis.
The 1999 compact, however, limits the tribe to 2,000 slots, and it's
doubtful that Sycuan would build a second casino without the 3,000
additional slots authorized in its deal with Schwarzenegger.
Moreover, the administration had been eliminating the second-casino
option from compacts it renegotiated before the five big agreements
signed last summer.
Ng could not explain why the governor approved a second large casino
in the Dehesa Valley when he opposes the Jamul band's bid to build the
first casino in Jamul. Both are rural locations off busy, two-lane roads.
"The compact we signed provides Sycuan with an option to add new
slots at a second facility," Ng said. "Should they decide to build that
facility, the compact requires that they mitigate all the off-reservation
effects of that gaming."
Sycuan Chairman Danny Tucker and other tribal officials have said the
former Singing Hills Resort & Country Club that the tribe purchased for
$40 million in 2001 would be a logical site for a second casino. But
Tucker said the 142-member tribe has no immediate plans to build a
second casino anywhere.
"We're concentrating on what we're going to do with what we have,"
Tucker said. "We always keep our options open .... We're out there to
do what's going to be best for our tribe for the next seven generations."
The 500 or so residents of Dehesa Valley found out about the second casino that could be built as far west as the former country club two
weeks after the Legislature adjourned when it was reported in The San
Diego Union-Tribune.
"Luckily, the Legislature did not approve it at the last minute," said
Lory Walls, another local activist opposed to the compact.
Land purchases
Since acquiring the 400-acre Singing Hills property, now known as the
Sycuan Resort and Casino, Sycuan has been expected to seek to place it
into trust with the federal government, a status that would make it
Indian land eligible for gaming.
The former country club is about three miles from Sycuan's reservation.
To connect the two, the tribe spent $25 million two years ago to buy an
additional 1,236 acres from Vulcan Materials.
The combined approximately 1,600 acres covers 24 separate parcels, all
of which are individually identified in Sycuan's pending deal with
Schwarzenegger. The compact declares the 1,600 acres "contiguous to
the existing reservation" and expressly authorizes a second casino on
the property if it is added to the reservation.
The federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the law that set the ground
rules for Indian gaming, generally restricts casinos to Indian lands that
existed on Oct. 17,1988, the date the law passed. But the statute
contains several exceptions, including one for lands that were
"contiguous" to a reservation on the cutoff date. It does not define
contiguous.
Although the country club was never contiguous to the reservation, it
could qualify under that exception if all 24 parcels are taken into trust
simultaneously as a single piece of property, according to the Bureau of
Indian Affairs.
"They can do that and it doesn't matter when they purchase the land or
in what order, ... as long as it is looked at as one application," said
Gary Garrison, a bureau spokesman.
Sycuan is in the early stages of preparing a single trust application for
the 1,600 acres, plus 300 more in other parcels. Although the tribe is
contemplating a second casino on the property, the trust application
would be for nongaming purposes, the tribe said.
"It's for residential uses and recreational, conservation uses, and also to
improve emergency access to the existing reservation," said Chantal
Saipe, San Diego County's tribal liaison.
Trust applications for gaming can take years, while those for housing
and other noncontroversial uses typically are approved much faster.
Sycuan's attorney, George Forman, said bundling of parcels in a single
trust application "is consistent with what has been done previously in a
variety of circumstances, including at Sycuan."
Forman said the tribe "regards the issue of contiguity as irrelevant
unless and until Sycuan proposes to conduct gaming on the land, and
Sycuan has made no decision in that regard."
Taking the land into trust, however, removes a major legal barrier to
using it for gaming.
Tax status changes
The trust application figures to face stiff local opposition. At 1,900
acres, it would be the largest single such conversion of once-private
property that has ever occurred in San Diego County. When lands are
taken into trust for tribes, they are no longer subject to local taxes or
land-use controls.
The county Board of Supervisors has long been opposed to any more
transfers of local lands into trust for tribes, although four supervisors -
Chairman Ron Roberts, Greg Cox, Bill Horn and Pam Slater-Pricehave
written letters of support for Sycuan's pending compact.
The letters cite the stronger environmental protections in the
agreement and extol the tribe's generous charitable contributions to
numerous groups.
"In short, the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation has been a great
neighbor and community leader," Slater-Price wrote in a Feb. 12 letter
to state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles.
Supervisor Dianne Jacob, who represents the Dehesa Valley, has not yet
taken a position on the compact.
"Obviously, local government did not have a seat at the table when that
compact was negotiated," Jacob said in a recent interview. "But the key
here is lands into trust, and the Board of Supervisors is unanimously
opposed to placing any additional lands into trust."
Although still weighing the compact, Jacob - a vocal opponent of the
Jamul casino - said she does not believe another casino should be built
on an expanded Sycuan reservation or anywhere else in the region.
"There is a feeling, not just in the Dehesa Valley, but from a broader
area ... that East County has enough casinos, period," Jacob said.
Federal policies
The federal government, however, may step in before anyone goes to
battle over a second Sycuan casino.
In May 200S, former Interior Secretary Gale Norton outlined a tough
new stance on off-reservation gaming in a letter that rejected a compact
for the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation in
Oregon.
The letter announced that the Department of Interior would no longer
approve compacts for casinos on "lands that are not now, and may
never be, Indian lands" of the tribe involved.
Ng, Schwarzenegger's spokesman, said the administration does not
believe the Warm Springs policy applies to the Sycuan compact.
Forman, Sycuan's attorney, said he also doesn't believe the Warm
Springs letter is "in any way applicable to Sycuan's situation."
However, George Skibine, acting assistant secretary for Indian affairs at
Interior, suggested in an e-mail that the Warms Springs policy could
pose a problem for the tribe.
"I think this new provision in the Sycuan compact is going to be
problematic for Interior," Skibine wrote, when asked specifically about
the provision authorizing a casino on the land that is not yet part of the
tribe's reservation.
If Sycuan's compact gets to the Department of Interior only to be
rejected, it would not be the first Schwarzenegger compact to stall
there.
More than two years after lawmakers ratified a new compact for San
Diego County's Ewiiaapaayp band, it still has not been approved by
Interior. Federal officials object to a provision that would allow the
Ewiiaapaayp to build a casino on the reservation of another tribe, the
Viejas of Alpine.
As a result, the Ewiiaapaayp band still has not submitted its compact to
the Department of Interior, because that would start a 4S-day review
period and force the federal government to either accept or reject the
deal.