Outlook: Gaming at issue land-into-trust applications pile up

"How did tribal gaming in the United States go from Cabazon to Carcieri? Two decades of muddled legal decisions — Seminole, Colorado River Indian Tribes, Rincon, to name but a few — wrought by its hasty approval has increased the likelihood that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 may once again come before Congress.

The Obama administration’s mid-June revocation of the Bush era’s controversial “commutability” standard for off-reservation casinos has once again flung open the regulatory doors for reservation-shopping by would-be gaming tribes that in a growing number of markets, is pitting tribe against tribe for market share.

The Mescalero Apache, for instance, which operates the Inn of the Mountain Gods resort and casino on its reservation near Ruidoso, NM, oppose a freshly revived effort by the Pueblo of Jemez tribe for approval of a casino close to the Apache’s key El Paso-Las Cruses market — but about 300 miles from its pueblo lands in northern New Mexico. The Bush administration in 2008 rejected the Jumez plan, along with at least eight other tribes’ proposed sites that were similarly deemed to be non-commutable for would-be tribal casino employees.

Others among those eight are similarly back in play, notably the Stockbridge-Munsee band and its bid for a casino in New York’s Catskills mountain region 90 miles from New York City, and about 1,000 miles from its Wisconsin reservation.

At a July hearing by a House subcommittee on Indian affairs, it was disclosed that the US Department of Interior is sifting through nearly 2,000 pending tribal land-into-trust applications. Only a relative handful is for gaming purposes, at least ostensibly. But once in trust, and depending on the outcome of L’ affaire Carcieri, many more of those parcels could qualify for gaming."

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AS TRUST APPLICATIONS PILE UP AND STATE LEADERS FRET, WILL IGRA FACE REVIEW? (Michael Pollock's Gaming Industry Observer 8/22)