Gambling compact signed
OLYMPIA – After a nearly 20-year history of repeated court clashes and seized slot machines, Gov. Chris Gregoire and the Spokane Tribe of Indians have signed a state gambling agreement.
Gregoire signed the agreement Friday evening, a week after the state gambling commission voted 6-3 to recommend it to her. Tribal Chairman Richard Sherwood had signed it on the tribe’s behalf earlier in the week. It now goes to the federal government, which is expected to approve the deal.
“We intend to personally deliver the compact to the Department of the Interior before the ink is dry,” tribal Secretary Gerald Nicodemus said Friday night. He said the agreement will help the tribes and the entire region, bringing jobs and an economic boost.
Nearly two years in the works, the agreement authorizes the Spokanes to have up to 1,500 slot-style machines for three years. After that, the limit rises to 3,000 or whatever the state will agree to in subsequent negotiations. The compact allows for up to five casinos, all at least 25 miles apart. Gregoire in 2005 balked at an earlier version of the compact that would have allowed 7,500 machines.
“I don’t like gambling. Never have, and I suspect at this stage I never will,” Gregoire said Monday. “I don’t like the negative consequences of gambling, and we’ve seen them in this state. But you know what? As governor, that personal opinion does not serve the people of this state.”
If she didn’t negotiate with the tribe, she said, the Spokanes or any other tribe could go to federal court and bypass the state entirely.
Other than a clause requiring the governor to negotiate in good faith on the matter, the compact does not address the tribe’s plan to build a casino on off-reservation land near Airway Heights. That would have to be approved first by the federal government, in a difficult process that could take years if it happens at all.
The Spokanes, whose casinos have 700 slot machines that the state long contended were illegal, were the sole remaining tribe in Washington to offer gambling without a state compact. The agreement signed Friday is similar to the state’s agreement with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, except that the Colvilles’ allows up to 4,800 machines at a total of six facilities.
In one key aspect, however, the Spokane compact is more generous than the other 27 compacts with Washington tribes. Each of those compacts authorizes a tribe 675 machines of its own. (The Tulalips, Muckleshoots and other tribes that offer many machines at large casinos lease the additional machines from other tribes.) The Spokane compact, however, authorizes the tribe to have 900 machines of its own.
Gregoire on Monday said she doesn’t see the compact as a blueprint for the other tribes, but the gambling commission is already working on a 27-tribe “master compact” that would allocate 900 machines to all gambling tribes in the state. That would drive the number of machines from the current 18,225 to about 25,000 statewide. The total number of casinos, however, would remain the same.
A handful of state lawmakers this week called on Gregoire to reject the compact, saying that Washingtonians have repeatedly voted against more gambling.
The compact “is an unnecessary expansion of gambling, and it is bad public policy for the citizens of this state,” wrote Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, Rep Bruce Chandler, R-Granger, and Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside. “… As governor, you have the ability to stop this.”
They are particularly concerned, they said, about the tribe’s intent to build an off-reservation casino. Honeyford separately wrote to the Department of the Interior, asking that any application for that be denied.
The compact also allows:
“Machines that accept cash, instead of paper tickets or plastic cards.
“Some machines that accept bets of up to $20.
An earlier proposal for unlimited betting at some gambling tables was dropped for at least three years by the tribe after a powerful state senator blasted that as a “plum” that other tribes would immediately demand.
The Spokanes also agreed to pay about a quarter of a percent of their gambling revenues (minus prizes paid out) into special funds for problem gambling programs and anti-smoking ads. Nicodemus said the tribe is also committed to minimizing any adverse impacts on surrounding communities. The compact requires the tribe to pay 3 percent of machine revenues into programs to benefit everyone, such as law enforcement, health care, job training or public works programs.
“We have listened to our friends and neighbors and will address their concerns,” he said. “This will be a new day for the Spokane Tribe and our neighbors.”
The gambling revenue will help improve health care, education and the reservation economy for generations, tribal leaders say.
Both sides say the agreement will put to rest the bitter legal clashes between the tribe and the state. In 1991, the tribe – which had asked for a compact three years earlier – sued the state for not negotiating in good faith. The following year, the tribe opened its Two Rivers casino without a state compact and also began running true slot machines at its Double Eagle casino on tribal trust land at Chewelah.
A U.S. attorney got an injunction against the tribe’s slot machines – which was then stayed upon appeal to the Ninth Circuit. In 1994, state gambling agents seized 50 slot machines en route to the Spokane Tribe.
Tribal attorneys and leaders told lawmakers last month that it was time for both sides to put that bitter history behind everyone. Shortly before last week’s gambling commission vote, tribal officials were making the rounds of key lawmakers’ offices, fine-tuning the deal.
“I have seen a change in their behavior over the last couple of years,” Gregoire said. “They have come to the table, and they have acted in good faith.”