Editorial: Wisconsin governor takes a 'peculiar stand' on casino

The leaders of the Menominee Nation have said they expect a decision on their proposal to turn Dairyland Greyhound Park into a tribal casino is imminent.

Assuming the Bureau of Indian Affairs is indeed on the verge of a decision, thoughts need to be turned to the next step in the process. Obviously if the project is rejected, there will be no next step other than a possible appeal of the decision. That’s what happened when the Bush administration rejected the project just before leaving office. The tribe appealed and won a new chance at approval, this time under the Obama administration.

If the Bureau of Indian Affairs approves the project, it still needs the approval of Gov. Scott Walker before the development can proceed. That appears to be a problem because of an very peculiar position taken by the governor. He has said he would not OK the Kenosha casino project without a consensus of the state’s 11 tribes agreeing to it. At an editorial board meeting at the Kenosha News in December and at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in late February, the governor made clear that by “consensus” he means all the tribes saying “yes.”

As we have pointed out before, this is an impossible standard.