Year End Thank You

On behalf of all of us at "Citizens Against" Reservation Shopping"(CARS), a huge thank you for your ongoing interest and support of our efforts to stop the casino proposed by the Cowlitz Tribe for the I-5/ La Center junction. This battle is far from over. At the same time, casino developers are no closer to winning approval for a La Center casino than they were six years ago when they first applied. We are in this to win, and with your support, we mean to do just that.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

CARS News Brief

Nearly eight years have passed since the Cowlitz Tribe first applied to put land at the La Center-Interstate 5 interchange into trust—and the federal government still has not made a decision. Here’s a quick year-end update.


Cowlitz trust application in limbo
A February 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Carcieri v. Salazar) continues to cloud the future of the proposed Cowlitz casino. The ruling bars the Secretary of the Interior from taking land into trust for any tribe not under federal jurisdiction in 1934, when the Indian Reorganization Act was signed into law.

Since the Cowlitz Tribe was not acknowledged by the federal government until 2002, it appears it may not have land taken into trust until an administrative or legislative fix is found.

Both houses of Congress have introduced Carcieri-related legislation, but it does not appear to be going anywhere fast. Administratively, the Department of the Interior has not responded to a request for a list of tribes affected by the Carcieri decision, and dozens of tribes remain in limbo with unanswered trust land applications.


Off-reservation policy under review
The Obama Administration has announced that it is reviewing policies for off-reservation gaming applications. The Cowlitz application is considered off-reservation.

Bush Administration policies restricted tribes from developing off-reservation casinos that were not within a reasonable commuting distance of the reservation. Also, as the distance between a tribe’s reservation and its proposed trust land acquisition increased, so did the weight federal decision-makers gave to concerns of state and local governments.

The Cowlitz Tribe has no reservation, so it is difficult to say how a possible loosening of Bush Administration policies would affect the Cowlitz application. However, several federal determinations—and an earlier Cowlitz claim—have stated that the Tribe’s geographical, historical and cultural nexus is along the Cowlitz River, well to the north of the proposed casino site.


Tribal housing opens in Toledo
The Cowlitz Tribe hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this week at its newly renovated senior housing project in Toledo, Wash., next to the historic Cowlitz Mission and cemetery. Toledo is about 60 miles north of Vancouver in the heart of the Tribe’s aboriginal homeland. CARS has long argued that this is where any tribal casino should be located as well.

The $5 million project turned the nuns’ quarters and classroom annex of the old St. Mary’s school into apartments for low-income seniors. According to an article in The (Longview) Daily News, only 10 or 12 Tribe members have signed up to move into the facility’s 32 units.

An April TDN article credited the Cowlitz Tribe with “starting a building boom in southern Lewis County” and said the Tribe was planning to build 30 single-family homes in Toledo as well.

The projects are funded with federal housing grants and economic stimulus money.


Casino developer injured
Seattle-based Cowlitz casino developer David Barnett, son of the late Cowlitz Tribe Chairman John Barnett, was seriously injured in a single-vehicle accident near his Shoreline home last month.

Barnett was apparently thrown from the bed of a pickup truck driven by his girlfriend. The King County Sheriff’s Office was investigating the incident as a possible case of vehicular assault.

Problem Gambling: Making Criminals of Trusted Employees

The Cowlitz Tribe filed its initial applications for trust land in 2002 and for a mega-casino and resort in 2004. Thanks in large part to a consistent outpouring of community sentiment against the proposal, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) has yet to make a final decision.

News on the Cowlitz proposal has been sparse recently, but stories illustrating casino-related problems abound. What follows is one that stands out.

Indian casino expert and author Jeff Benedict calls them the "eight uglies":

Suicide, divorce, foreclosure, bankruptcy, white collar crime, robbery, embezzlement, theft.

According to Benedict, these go hand-in-hand with the presence of out-sized casinos both on and off American Indian reservations.

In Oregon this month, the news media reported two separate cases of employee theft attributed to problem gambling. On October 16, Oregonian reporter Lisa Lednicer reported that 56-year-old Sandra Jena Klingman of Canby pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing more than $519,000 from Paul Schatz Furniture in Tigard, over a two-year period.

The Canby woman had worked for Schatz for 12 years and had no prior criminal record. The newspaper quotes owner Paul Schatz as remarking, "It's a betrayal of trust, that's the hardest thing. That someone we treated like family could look us in the eye every day. But that hasn't undermined our trust in our employees."

On the same day, Norma Orndoff of Klamath Falls was reported by the Herald and News Record to have pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated theft and three counts of identity theft. She was sentenced to three months in jail and 5 years probation for stealing from her employer, a local roofing and siding company.

Both women were ordered to make restitution and undergo gambling treatment.

Studies indicate that problem gambling doubles within 50 miles of a large casino.

La Center says ‘no’ to MOU

A tip of the CARS hat to those of you who attended last night’s La Center City Council meeting and who wrote in to express disapproval of the city negotiating a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Cowlitz Tribe.

After sitting through four hours of city staff presentations and citizen comment, three anti-casino members on the council beat back a carefully orchestrated effort by Mayor Jim Irish to get the city to begin working with the tribe on casino mitigation issues. Council members Bob Smith, Linda Tracy and Troy Van Dinter rejected two motions designed to get La Center formally involved in a sewage treatment program designed to serve a massive casino-resort at the 1-5/La Center junction. It was the fourth time the council has refused to negotiate with the tribe.

A contingent of La Center neighbors began the public testimony by extolling the virtues of negotiations with the tribe, but to no avail. Other Clark County citizens from both inside and outside the city then weighed in to oppose such negotiations before two separate measures were defeated 3-2.

The Cowlitz casino developers badly need an MOU to complete their application to the U.S. Department of the Interior for a casino and reservation in Clark County.

Read about it in The Columbian: La Center council again rejects casino talks

Time change for Wednesday meeting

Please note: The meeting in La Center will be at 7 p.m., Wednesday, June 10 (See previous post for details.)

If you cannot join us, please contact the La Center City Council members:

Mayor Jim Irish (jirish@ci.lacenter.wa.us)
Councilmember Bill Birdwell (bbirdwell@ci.lacenter.wa.us)
Councilmember Mike Nolan (mnolan@ci.lacenter.wa.us)Councilmember Bob Smith (bsmith@ci.lacenter.wa.us)
Councilmember Linda Tracy (ltracy@ci.lacenter.wa.us)
Councilmember Troy Van Dinter (tvandinter@ci.lacenter.wa.us)

Or call (360) 263-5123.

Directions to the La Center Community Center, 1000 E. 4th St.: From Interstate 5, take Exit 16. Turn east onto NW La Center Road and head into town. Turn right onto West 4th Street. The Community Center is located near the ball fields, downhill from the high school.

Your presence is urgently needed Wednesday in La Center!

The lull in the casino war is over!

With time running out on a proposal the Cowlitz Tribe made to the City of La Center nearly a year ago, Mayor Jim Irish has called yet another public meeting to try and keep the tribe's offer alive. Irish is apparently hoping that if he can get enough people out, he will convince the three council members who have consistently stood against the casino to change their votes.

Please help us support council members Bob Smith, Linda Tracy and Troy Van Dinter with your presence at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Community Center in La Center (1000 E. 4th St.).

Here are a couple of things to know:

Fact No. 1: Irish wants the city to negotiate an agreement with the tribe. The tribe currently has no agreement with any local government and badly needs one. (The memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Clark County has been invalidated.)

The U.S. Department of the Interior wrote in a January 2008 memo that any tribal casino trust application should include copies of "intergovernmental agreements" and that "Failure to achieve such agreements should weigh heavily against the approval of the application."

An agreement with La Center would constitute such an intergovernmental agreement.

If you oppose a casino as we do, help us help the council to maintain its current stance against negotiating with the tribe.

Fact No. 2: The Cowlitz Tribe (read: the casino developers) would love to lure the City of La Center into a deal in which the tribe would help finance a sewage treatment facility. The city would own, operate and have liability for it, and the casino-resort complex would be its largest and most important customer. Sound like a recipe for a successful relationship? A different, healthier alternative -- a regional sewage treatment facility -- is already in the planning stages.

We will leave you with a persistent question to ponder: Why does Mayor Irish consistently say he opposes the casino while he just as consistently supports the Cowlitz casino developers' cause?

Please join other casino opponents Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the La Center Community Center, 1000 E. 4th St., La Center.

Recent events related to the Cowlitz casino

The effort to keep a Las Vegas-style casino out of Clark County has turned into a lengthy vigil, lengthened further by the long transition period between the previous federal administration and the current. However, last week brought some movement:

• 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.