Indian Gaming > Column: BIA moving slow on off-reservation casino

June 15, 2006

Column: BIA moving slow on off-reservation casino

Indianz.Com Casino Stalker
Tracking casino proposals across Indian Country.

"U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, as we earlier reported, dialed up the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Minneapolis late last year to lean on the bureaucrats about the $808 million casino being proposed at the Dairyland Greyhound Park in Kenosha. Big-shot businessman Dennis Troha, the driving force behind the off-reservation casino, and his friends and family donated more than $31,000 to the Janesville Republican's campaign in 2005.

But now we learn that Ryan was in the face of top federal officials in February to find out what was taking them so long with the casino application.

"Jim Cason and I met with Congressman Ryan yesterday afternoon," George Skibine, director of the Office of Indian Gaming Management, wrote in a March 1 e-mail. Cason is the associate deputy secretary at the U.S. Interior Department.

"He (Ryan) asked us for a time frame to get a decision on this application. He was also really annoyed with Maria Wiseman for missing her self-imposed deadlines for reviewing the draft (environmental impact statement)."

In response, the BIA official in Minneapolis put no definite deadline for finishing work on the Kenosha proposal. He also noted that the proposed off-reservation casino in Beloit was being held up because of concerns voiced by the Ho-Chunk tribe, which fears losing a chunk of business from its Wisconsin Dells-area gaming hall if a new competitor is allowed to open."

Get the Story:
Cary Spivak & Dan Bice: Extra effort [second item] (The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 6/15)