- New leadership at BIA. The Department of the Interior now has in place an Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, the top decision-maker on casino applications and overseer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The U.S. Senate confirmed former Idaho Attorney General and Brigham Young University law professor Larry EchoHawk, a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. His policy views regarding Indian gaming are not well known.
- Hearings on trust land for tribes. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs conducted a hearing on the U.S. Supreme Court's February Carcieri opinion, which has thrown into question the entire process for taking land into trust for Indian tribes. Carcieri states that the government has no authority to acquire trust land for tribes not under federal jurisdiction in 1934. The Cowlitz Tribe, not acknowledged by the government until 2000, is clearly affected. The House Natural Resources Committee has also held a hearing on Carcieri, with additional sessions expected in an effort to provide a "fix."
- Proposed casino site "urban" again. A Clark County Superior Court ruling returned the proposed casino site, in addition to thousands of other acres, to an urban designation. In 2008, the state's Growth Management Hearings Board had removed that acreage from urban status, as defined in the county's Comprehensive Growth Management Plan, and returned it to agricultural status. That made the proposed casino site ineligible to receive from the county the urban-level services a casino-resort would need. It still might be, if the ruling is appealed.
County-tribe MOU rescinded. Also, in early April, the Cowlitz Tribe entered into an agreement with Clark County rescinding the 2004 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding services, payments and other provisions enabling a casino in Clark County. The MOU had been invalidated in 2007 by the state Growth Management Hearings Board, which had ruled the document placed the county out of compliance with the Growth Management Act, a situation the county could no longer tolerate.
In a desperate attempt to maintain the most important elements of the agreement in force (we understand that MOUs are vital to casino applications), the tribe wrote a unilateral ordinance containing many of the same provisions as the MOU, and it was accepted by the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) in 2008. The NIGC, however, noted that the ordinance's enforceability had not been examined.
Believing the county is in need of some "insurance" should the federal government suddenly approve a Cowlitz casino, county commissioners wrote in April that they will rely on the ordinance should land be taken into trust.
We will continue to keep you informed.
