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Sacramento Politicians Should Use Gaming Compacts to Protect California Election Law

By Ned Wigglesworth
Policy Advocate
California Common Cause

The five southern California tribes currently seeking permission to vastly expand their gambling empires have spent millions of dollars on California politics and elections to achieve their goal. By now, every Californian has seen the flapping eagle that was a component of Morongo’s planned $20 million TV campaign to win expansion approval. Some might also remember “Team 2006”, the $10 million independent expenditure committee funded by the tribes last fall to extract political retribution when the tribes’ expansion agreements stalled in the Assembly.

This combination of brute financial intimidation and dupe-the-public ad campaign has brought these gaming tribes to the threshold of their objective: permission to triple the number of slots in their casinos. Not-so-quiet whispers in the corridors of the Capitol suggest that the Legislature is about to cave into the tribes, demonstrating yet again the power of the dollar in Sacramento.

But even as these tribes have spent tens of millions of dollars to impact California law, they have sought in the state’s courts to exempt themselves from California laws regulating election and political spending. (Apparently, this is how much audacity a $10 million political warchest will buy you.) This self-serving exceptionalism – “the law applies to you, but not to us” – could be stopped in its tracks if the Governor and Legislature demanded that any gaming compacts between the tribes and the state included agreement by the tribes to abide by the laws protecting California’s political process.

Now, one of the five tribes with an expansion proposal, the Agua Caliente of Palm Springs—the same tribe deeply involved in the Abramoff bribery scandal, has quietly positioned itself to continue arguing its privileged status in front of the US Supreme Court, a petition now scheduled for July 28, AFTER it gains its permission for a huge gambling expansion in Sacramento.

A little background: in October 2002, the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission brought action against the Agua Caliente Tribe alleging dozens of violations of California’s Political Reform Act. (Second Amended Complaint for Civil Penalties and Injunctive Relief Under the Political Reform Act of 1974, as Amended) Basically, the FPPC alleged that Agua Caliente made contributions of at least $7.5 million to statewide ballot initiatives and nearly every candidate in the state except for Inyo County dogcatcher, but without disclosing them as required by law.

At the time, the amount of spending by Agua Caliente and whether they intended to report it even worried its lobbyist, now-convicted felon, Michael Scanlon. In an email to Jack Abramoff, Scanlon wrote how the Tribe’s simmering dispute with the FPPC was irritating politicians, but not for the reasons one might expect:

“The campaign finance issue is pissing off people big time in Sacramento. Essentially the tribe is refusing to release their contribution data (to whom they gave and how much). This issue is now in court. The AC says they are sovereign, and therefore do not have to disclose.

“If the tribe wins-guess what-Every penny they contributed would have to be returned – as under California law candidates cannot take contributions from foreign countries.

“We are running into [t]his everywhere we turn. The funny thing is-the only thing the pols really care about is giving the money back-not so much the issue itself. At some point we may have to recommend dropping the suit if they want to be successful.”

Last December, the California Supreme Court affirmed the FPPC’s right to enforce California’s election and lobbying laws against the defendant tribe. And recently, after the CA Supreme Court denied a rehearing, Agua asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a 60-day extension of time to file an appeal. (Scott Hallabrin, General Counsel and Lawrence T. Woodlock, Senior Commission Counsel, Fair Political Practices Commission memorandum on Pending Litigation to Chairman Johnson and Commissioners Hodson, Huguenin, Leidigh, and Remy. May 30, 2007)

Back to the present: The compacts currently under discussion present a golden opportunity for the Governor and Legislature, in an exchange for billions of dollars worth of casino expansions, to contractually bind the gaming tribes to abide by California’s political laws, thus ensuring that the law applies equally to us all regardless of any future court decisions. The pending casino expansion legislation offers perhaps the best opportunity for an agreement, one Californians and our elected officials cannot afford to miss.

Ned Wigglesworth, joined Common Cause as a policy advocate earlier this year, after working as a corporate lawyer, bartender and creative writer. From these experiences and his time spent growing up on a sheep farm in Kansas, Ned brings a common-sense populist perspective to the problem of big money in politics.

Posted on June 14, 2007

Comments

It is a disgrace to see the people of the land, Indians, acting as they do. I am a disenrolled Indian from the Pechanga Tribe. Money has no race, heritage, or or pride when it comes to acquiring wealth the adage is always more, more, and more. The political concisest is take the money and we'll let someone else deal with the growing problem of out of control studio-nations. If the tribes had the interests of the people, specifically their own, then there would not be the issue of corruption within the tribes like Aqua Caliente and Pechanga with their civil rights abuses against their own members. It is becoming worrysome that the tribes are proving that they are incapable of self determination and self governance. Sacramento needs to step back and see what the real issues are because if they did they would see that there is a way to resolve many if not all of the problemes. Unfortunately for the Wealthy tribes the remedy will not be to their liking, yet it is the very tribes that caused all fo the issues they are now battling.

Posted by: Guerra Nunez aka White Buffalo at June 14, 2007 09:21 AM

I had high hopes that the Assembly would hold the trbies to task regarding non-Indian workers' rights. Alas, Nunez has sold out big-time and tghe Indians are going to buy another notch in their belt of ultimately owning the entire United States.

I agree with White Buffalo...if the tribes want to be sovereign and not subject to our laws, it should be a criminal act for them to influence those enacting the laws in any way. It should also be illegal for any state or political sub-division employee, especially elected officials, to accept anything of value from them. You can't have your cake and eat it too (unless, of course, you're an Indian.)

Posted by: Clark at June 14, 2007 03:26 PM

Thank goodness the state lawmakers had enough savvy to grasp that not every pet issue could ride the proposed (and now ratified) amendments to the tribal-state gaming compacts -- like union-building, settled tribal membership disputes, campaign finance reporting, and the size of donut holes. Mud-slingers like Mr. Wigglesworth do not advance their half-baked views very far, either. Yes, tribal governments do present an exceptional situation in America, neither a foreign sovereign nor a sub-division of the state, but lying somewhere in between, with a sovereignty at least in parity with the state, while enjoying a government-to-government relationship with the United States. Every president since Richard Nixon has acknowledged this unique tribal status. Tribal sovereignty pre-dates the U. S. Constitution, and thus does not arise from any grant of the federal government. Plenty of information exists on this subject, and Mr. Wigglesworth may look it up before penning another of his bloviations.

Posted by: anotherview at July 2, 2007 01:42 PM

It might be wise before continuing anything with any tribal casinos to verify the legitimacy of the tribe in the first place.

It looks like the Santa Ynez Chumash Casino is on non-tribal land, owned by an unrecognized tribe, led by someone of non-indian descent.

Allowing foreign entities to operate on American soil without regulation is not just unhealthy - it is dangerous, especially when we are talking the huge amounts of money the casinos take in. Just think what it would be like to give every business in America the same lack of regulation that tribal casinos operate with..

Posted by: sosumi at November 23, 2007 11:03 AM

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