Casino news source: Sacaramento Bee - http://www.sacbee.com
Tribes seek legislative OK on Barstow casino project
By Peter Hecht - Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, June 28, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3
Francine Kupsch and her family hauled their trailer of broken dreams to the state Capitol on Wednesday, hoping their battered former home would persuade lawmakers to allow them to build a casino.
Kupsch is a member of the Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians, an impoverished Indian tribe from harsh, isolated mountains in San Diego County.
The Los Coyotes tribe and a Northern California partner -- the Big Lagoon Rancheria in Humboldt County -- have been trying to persuade lawmakers to approve a deal to allow them to build side-by-side gambling resorts in Barstow that would total 200 hotel rooms and more than 2,000 slot machines.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed gambling compacts with both tribes in 2005, hoping to keep Big Lagoon from opening a casino on a pristine coastal estuary while also giving Los Coyotes an economic opportunity in the depressed Mojave Desert town.
But despite Schwarzenegger's declaration May 31 that he still stands solidly behind this "unique collaboration," the Barstow casino development is getting nowhere in the Legislature -- which must ratify gambling compacts signed by the governor.
So Kupsch brought her trailer -- an 8-by-13-foot metal hull with a rusted stove and wooden slats for bunk beds -- to the Capitol. For 2- 1/2 years, without electricity or running water, Kupsch, her husband and three children lived in the trailer on the Los Coyotes reservation.
They later upgraded to a 24-by-48-foot modular home, where a photo was taken of Kupsch reading to her young son by light of a kerosene lamp. The photo -- a symbol of American Indian poverty -- was used in television commercials to persuade voters to approve 1990 and 2000 ballot measures legalizing tribal gambling in California.
The Legislature is now consumed with gambling agreements that stand to allow five other Southern California tribes -- which already rake in hundreds of millions of dollars a year from casinos -- to expand. But things haven't worked out as expected for Kupsch and her family.
On Wednesday, Kupsch stood in front of her trailer with her son, Joseph Kupsch, now 17, who was in the old photo. She decried the massive casino profits of other tribes as "just sickening" and said: "I just hope and pray the creator will hear our prayers that the Legislature will give us an opportunity."
State Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, is co-sponsoring a bill to ratify the Barstow casino compacts in the hope the development will energize the economy of the desert town by siphoning off gamblers driving to Las Vegas.
But major casino tribes including the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, which is seeking to add 5,500 slot machines to its 2,000-slot casino near Highland, say the Barstow deal represents an unacceptable case of "reservation shopping."
"For us, it's fundamentally a matter of encroachment on the ancestral lands of another tribe," said San Manuel spokesman Jacob Coin, who said Barstow was long ago roamed by the Serrano Mission Indians, San Manuel's ancestors.
The Schwarzenegger administration negotiated the Barstow casino agreement hoping to settle a lawsuit by the Big Lagoon Rancheria that demanded that California honor its right to a casino on its reservation near state park land and coastal waters.
Tribal Chairman Virgil Moorehead said the Humboldt County tribe has developed plans for a 50- to 70-room hotel and 200 to 400 slot machines along Big Lagoon if the Barstow plan fails.
"If Sept. 17 passes without ratification of the Barstow project," Moorehead said, referring to the end of the legislative session, "we will write a letter to the state of California saying we're going to negotiate for a casino back at Big Lagoon." |
|
