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December 18, 2011 in Idaho
Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s gifts from gaming add up
Betty Squires, of Moscow, tries her luck at the Coeur d’Alene Casino on Wednesday. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe has donated $16.8 million to schools and other educational causes since 1994, under its pledge to donate 5 percent of its net profits to education.
(Full-size photo)
When the Coeur d’Alene Tribe first signed a gaming compact with the state of Idaho in 1992, tribal leaders insisted on donating 5 percent of net casino gaming proceeds to education on or near their reservation – a gesture that has added up to $16.8 million in donations since 1994, including $1.5 million this year and $1.8 million last year.
“The tribe originated the idea,” said David High, the now-retired deputy Idaho attorney general who for years oversaw negotiations with the state’s Indian tribes over gaming. “They didn’t have to do it.”
In fact, High said, the National Indian Gaming Regulatory Act forbids states from taxing or assessing any kind of fees on the proceeds of tribal gaming. “Congress intended the tribes to get the financial benefit of Indian gaming and did not want the states trying to take a piece of that,” he said.
But in the case of the Coeur d’Alenes, “The tribe has agreed to it is the thing,” High said.
Later, the tribe wrote the 5 percent contribution into a tribal gaming initiative that Idaho voters strongly approved in 2002, prompting two other Idaho tribes, the Kootenai and Nez Perce, to add it to their compacts as well.
The biggest beneficiary of the Coeur d’Alenes’ donations has been the beleaguered Plummer-Worley School District, which has received $3.125 million, including $110,000 this year and $110,000 last year. The second-biggest beneficiary was the Coeur d’Alene Tribal School in DeSmet, which got $2.8 million.
“We’ve been very grateful for it – it’s helped us out an awful lot, helped our students,” said Judi Sharrett, Plummer-Worley superintendent. This year, the tribe’s contribution to Plummer-Worley made up 2.4 percent of the school district’s budget.
The district is one of the state’s poorest; it’s the only one for which the state has had to force a property tax increase after local voters repeatedly refused to approve a bond to replace a condemned elementary school.
“They’re close and a lot of our kids go there,” said Helo Hancock, the tribe’s legislative liaison, adding, “There’s certainly a need there.”
Ernie Stensgar, the longtime Coeur d’Alene tribal chairman and current vice chairman who signed the original gaming compact with the state, said, “I think we wanted to really give people a good look at who we were. And giving is part of our culture.”
That’s a tradition that stretches far back into the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s history, from helping out starving and freezing white settlers in pioneer times to the cultural tradition of handing out blankets, shawls, drums and bandannas at tribal events.
The Nez Perce and tiny Kootenai tribes also have taken pride in their donations since 2002, and note that like the Coeur d’Alenes, they’ve given more than the required 5 percent and have supported many causes, including college scholarships, social programs, wildlife restoration and local kindergarten classes.
But the success of the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel, which has made the tribe the second-largest employer in North Idaho, behind only Kootenai Medical Center, has prompted some grumbling in recent years over who got how much of the education money. That’s prompted the tribe to stop holding formal ceremonies announcing the donations for the past two years, which led to speculation that the tribe no longer was making them.
“I know in the recent years they just haven’t wanted to make a big showing about it,” said state Rep. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, who chairs the Idaho Council on Indian Affairs.
In August, the Coeur d’Alene Press reported that schools in the region, including Plummer-Worley, hadn’t gotten contributions from the tribe in two years, though the same newspaper had published an article in January noting that the district had included grant funds from the casino in its budget. The Idaho Lottery issued a statement saying the tribe had met its 5 percent requirement and had been “good stewards of their gaming activities and generous neighbors to the communities on or near the reservation as well as to other good causes.”
Said Hancock, “We challenge anybody to find another organization who gives more to the community than the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.” He called suggestions that the tribe wasn’t keeping its 5 percent promise “ridiculous and offensive.”
The hubbub prompted a series of public records requests to the Idaho Lottery Commission, the agency designated to oversee tribal gaming in the state. Most sought a breakdown of who got how much money from the Coeur d’Alenes’ 5 percent donations, but the lottery doesn’t have that information. Both the tribe’s compact with the state and the 2002 initiative say the donations are handed out “at the sole discretion of the tribe.”
The only information the tribes hand over to the Lottery Commission is their audited financial statement, which shows the 5 percent figure, along with other proprietary information about their gaming operations, such as, in some cases, background checks on employees and information about security procedures. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s compact with the state exempts from public disclosure information it submits to the state under the trade secrets clause of Idaho Public Records Law.
Compacts between the state and the other tribes contain similar trade-secrets confidentiality provisions.
High noted that the Coeur d’Alenes’ donations to the communities around them stood them in good stead when then-Gov. Phil Batt convened a task force in 1997 to hold hearings around the state to determine whether Idahoans still wanted to allow gambling on Indian reservations. Despite a membership that included a host of gambling opponents, the task force voted narrowly in favor of allowing limited reservation casinos to continue operating.
“At the hearings, we had local government people coming in, saying how gaming had benefited their communities,” High said. “So it was obviously really a wise move on their part.”
In 2002, when he was a candidate for Congress, Gov. Butch Otter endorsed the tribal gaming initiative.
Idaho’s once-destitute Indian tribes have thrived since they added gambling operations. Unemployment among Coeur d’Alene tribal members before the casino was as high as 70 percent, while now there are more jobs than tribal members on the reservation. Among all residents of the reservation, including non-Indians, unemployment has dropped by half from 11.3 percent in 1990 to 5.2 percent, on average, between 2005 and 2009, according to the Idaho Department of Labor.
Hancock said the tribe now employs nearly 2,000 people, including 1,300 at the casino; nearly 70 percent are non-Indians.
The Coeur d’Alenes have used gaming proceeds to invest in programs for senior citizens, offer college scholarships to youth, improve housing and health programs, purchase land on the reservation, establish veterans programs and more. The reservation has the nation’s first Indian health clinic that also serves non-Indians. “There are so many impacts,” Stensgar said. “I think there’s more of a pride in our people – I can see that.”
He said the tribe wanted to demonstrate that it would use gaming proceeds to “enhance not only tribal people, but all the other people that lived around us, and that promise hasn’t been broken – we have done that, and we are still doing that.”
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oneanddone on December 18 at 8:51 a.m.
Imagine the additional tax funding the state could garner if the same sort of gambling was allowed state wide.
SMARTGUY on December 18 at 1:15 p.m.
This tribe did not earn this money, they merely collected it from the hard working people who did earn it. Perhaps in the future the tribe could donate a few dollars to help out the people they exploit. Give a few dollars to help prevent the rise in bankruptcy, that casinos cause. Give some money to combat the rise in divorce rates, caused by the casinos. Give some money to help control the rise in D. W. I. arrests, and smoking deaths, caused by the casinos. Poverty goes up near a casino, as well as depression rates. Children, and the elderly, are more often abused, abandoned, and mistreated, near a casino. Tribal members are often the biggest victims of there own greed, as many of them are addicted to gambling as well, losing more then they make from the profits. Is all this misery, really worth a few donations from the tribes.
lackiwanni on December 18 at 1:17 p.m.
The legislation that will let the card rooms install slot machine devices calls for the revenue that they generate to be 35%. This makes the donations of the tribes almost inconsequential.
Anyway that you slice it, Washington state will be better off by letting the card rooms be able to compete with the tribes.
greyhound2 on December 18 at 2:56 p.m.
A 5% donation is better than a 40% State and Federal income tax, as everyone else is forced to pay. Why is it that the tribes are always asking for grants (which you don’t have to pay back) from regular taxpayers to fund the next deal which comes along? In a casino, the odds are in favor of the house, and the longer you play, the more you lose. In a casino, the objective is to keep you playing as long as possible. A committed gambling sucker is a casino’s best friend.
greenlibertarian on December 18 at 4:18 p.m.
Everybody with normal IQ and above knows that Indian casinos make money off the stupid. I call it Red Man’s Revenge. I used to have occasion to frequent the CdA Casino as part of a business proposition.
Most of the people throwing their money away there are old and white. Maybe they were hard working at some time in their lives, but now they’re spending their retirement. Just like the SYSA Bingo Hall down the road from me, the CdA casino is quite busy during the first week of the month, when everybody gets their checks; in the last week of the month, typically they’re very slow. I’d say the biggest single “source” of revenue of gambling operations of the Tribe come from social security checks.
The argument is made that well, they’re just entertaining themselves, and that’s true. Sad, but true.
I think their operations should be more transparent and open to scrutiny because any sort of gambling operating generating lots of cash can lead to corruption.
I doubt the CdA Casino has lead to increased social ills and poverty as some are claiming here without any basis. The positive economic benefits are readily knowable.
I certainly don’t consider the Tribe(s) as perfectly noble and good. In fact, in California, many Tribal Councils of gambling rich tribes are dis-enrolling members and cutting them off from any association or benefits, with dubious documentation and poor administration of justice.
PassinThru on December 18 at 6:21 p.m.
The Spokane Tribe wants to put their next casino in Airway Heights. They might have an easier time of it if their books revealed a similar trend as the CdA’s. So how about it, S-R? Ask ‘em and tell us what happens!
cryssT on December 18 at 8:03 p.m.
There’s a place for gambling and it’s not on every street corner or every convenience store. I rarely gamble, but when I do I go to the CdA Casino. It’s a nice drive, has great foo and enjoy a couple hours on the penny slots. If Idaho or Washington allows gambling every where, there’ll be no money made off of me. Gambling at CdA Casino is my way of contributing to schools and helping the employment rate.
zelda on December 18 at 9:43 p.m.
What interests me are the mega-businesses, many out of SE Asia and Hong Kong, that craft the deals that get these casinos permitted, built and operated. They’re the ones that set the wheels in motion. Interesting that one of these global gaming companies bought the Miami Herald HQ building with plans to make it part of a huge casino complex. That’s how desperate things are in Florida.
The Indian tribes are the mega-gaming companies’ entree to establish gambling resorts and make money off of all that brings with it.
But the states paved the way in the last period of economic deperation by legalizing lotteries. Once casino gambling is allowed to proliferate, state governments are structured to depend on the gambling tax revenues. There was no going back. The existing casinos will fight competition tooth and nail so the logical next step to add tax revenues is legalization of drugs. There’s a lot of human wreakage up ahead — kind of a highway to hell for the poor and addiction-prone.
greenlibertarian on December 18 at 10:45 p.m.
Zelda I understand your concerns, however the problem is that there is no basis in law to prohibit gambling outright, besides that which are Puritanical. The same is true regarding legal and illegal drug usage.
The War on Drugs is an utter failure, prohibition on certain drug use is worse than if certain substances were perfectly legal.
If we spend the resources focusing on understanding the possibility for addictions, preventing such, and dealing with such when it occurs, far fewer people will be harmed and far less resources employed than the “Just Say No” sham we currently perpetuate.
The War on Drugs CREATED numerous criminal syndicates and has corrupted police forces here and elsewhere.
zelda on December 19 at 11:07 a.m.
@greenlibertarian — I don’t disagree with you, except to say that not all currently illegal drugs are the same in the behaviors they cause in users.
Where there’s room for debate is the effectiveness of drug/gambling/narcotics treatment programs. I would be surprised if the success rate is even 10%. So while the war on drugs may be futile, I don’t think it’s realistic to say that the ills unleashed on society by drugs can be addressed in a satisfactory way by treatment programs.
To open the lid of Pandora’s box wider at a time of wrenching structural changes to the U.S. employment seems to me to invite more chaos. In a nutshell, the economic outlook is so dismal that people are seeking out all kinds of ways to self-medicate their way through the pain.