"In Amador County, all the smart money says take the deal. Allow the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians to build a casino near the hamlet of Ione, 40 miles southeast of Sacramento.

In exchange, the county will pick up almost $18 million immediately and another $8 million annually for police and fire protection and other programs. The tribe has also agreed to pay the $1.4 million legal tab the county has racked up in its three-year battle to stop this casino.

The Faustian bargain tiny Amador County faces perfectly illustrates the powerlessness of local governments when they come up against the relentless expansion of Indian tribal gambling interests and their wealthy non-Indian sponsors. (The wealthy sponsor funding this casino effort is Tom Wilmot, a shopping center developer from New York.)

If county supervisors agree to the deal and allow the tribe to build a casino that 85 percent of Amador voters do not want, local governments get a boatload of money and other benefits. If supervisors continue to fight and lose – a very real possibility – the generous settlement agreement disappears. An arbitrator will impose a settlement that may not be nearly as lucrative as the deal now on the table.

So supervisors are in a quandary. An activist majority of residents don't want a casino and are threatening to recall supervisors who vote for the deal. If they reject the deal and lose in court, Amador gets the unwanted casino anyway and a less beneficial agreement with the tribe.

No community should have to face such a choice. A single family armed with a deep-pocket sponsor should not have the power to force its will on an entire community. But that's the case in Amador County and elsewhere, and it will continue to be the case until Congress changes the law."

Get the Story:
Editorial: Either way, it's a roll of the dice up in Amador (The Sacramento Bee 2/26)
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