Trent Franks’ casino legislation worth a shot
The Republic | azcentral.comFri Apr 12, 2013 7:19 AM
As game efforts go, federal legislation proposed by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., to forestall construction of a new tribal casino near Glendale is a worthy effort.
Likely a losing effort, considering the makeup of Congress. But worthy nonetheless.
The prospects for southern Arizona’s Tohono O’odham tribe building its casino-resort, purported to be a $500 million project near 95th and Northern avenues, seem strong. The Department of the Interior so far has green-lighted the deal, and the courts have yet to prove a real impediment.
No legal standard in statute or tribal law explicitly defends the intent of voters. There is only righteousness on their side. And the law, in this case, is indifferent to that sentiment.
When Arizona voters approved Proposition 202 in 2002, authorizing then-Gov. Jane Dee Hull to negotiate gaming compacts with Arizona’s various tribes, the clear, popular expectation was that the compacts would restrict the growth of casino-style gaming. Besides expressing an altruistic sense of economic fairness to the tribes, there was no greater motivation for voters than that.
It was a campaign drumbeat, repeated endlessly by Hull and state gaming officials, as well as by David LaSarte, then the executive director of the Arizona Indian Gaming Association.
On April 8, 2002, LaSarte testified before the Arizona Senate’s Committee on Government. He assured members that the compacts then under negotiation would “limit the number of facilities in the Phoenix metro area to the current number.”
The hard limit on new casinos was a selling point in the $30 million advertising campaign funded partly by the Tohono O’odham tribe itself.
Evidence unearthed as a result of the lawsuits filed to stop the casino project strongly suggests tribal leaders and their lawyers were plotting to circumvent voters’ intent on Prop. 202 even before the votes had been logged.
Gross hypocrisy, alas, is not a standard that holds up well in court.
Will Franks’ bill hold up? In all candor, we’re not holding out a lot of hope.
It is better than the legislation Franks sponsored in 2011, which sought to halt the project by revising, well after the fact, existing federal-tribal agreements.
The new bill would block construction of any new tribal casino in the Phoenix area at least until 2027, when the current tribal compacts begin expiring.
It is honest, straightforward legislation that seeks to do what no court or federal agency cares to do: pay serious mind to the clear intent of voters — those people who made it possible in the first place for the Tohono O’odhams to reap millions in gaming revenue.
With Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., on board as a co-sponsor, the bill has a bipartisan gloss. Still, Franks’ last effort failed in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and that political reality has not changed.
The Tohono O’odham gambit is an insult to the goodwill of state voters as well as to aspirations of the Phoenix-area tribes, which have invested countless millions in their gaming concerns.
The law and federal lawmakers and their agencies have been indifferent about such insults.
We hope that changes.
http://www.azcentral.com/opinions/articles/20130411editorial-franks-try-worth-shot.html
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