JERRY GAY
Looking for a jackpot: Katrina Mann of Marysville.
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"Slot machinesnow only found in reservation casinoshelp drive the gambling economy that has improved the prospects of the Tulalip Tribe from boosting retail development to financing new school buses."
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An Indian casino manager is gazing through a one-way mirror over the great expanse of the gaming room below and watches as hordes of pale-skinned tourists feed the slot machines. Bright, multicolored lights flash on the video screens, and a frenzied din of bells rises from the casino. He turns to a visitor and smiles.
"Ah, the return of the White Buffalo," he sighs.
The anecdote has been told and retold in varying versions throughout Indian Country ever since the treaty tribes learned how to leverage their federally guaranteed sovereignty into burgeoning gambling empires. For many of the nation's tribes, the newfound booty, willingly handed over by millions of gamblers every year, has brought hope and new opportunity.
On the Tulalip Reservation just north of Everett, there are social- services programs the tribe could never have dreamed of supporting 10 years ago. There are preschool programs, art therapy for older kids, a new health clinic and the money to staff it, more jobs, new housing, and full college scholarships to any Tulalip youngster who can make the grade. A reservation that just over a decade ago suffered an unemployment rate of nearly 60 percent now has work for nearly any tribal member who wants a job.
And it is all due to casino gambling. More specifically, it is because of slot machines, the most popularand, some say, addictiveform of gambling yet invented. The Tulalip Casino alone boasts about 1,000 of them. The devices are actually based on the same principle as the state's scratch ticket games. But the machines are designed to look and act like electronic versions of the one-armed bandits of old. Instead of using coins, gamblers buy tickets that are coded and played until they are exhausted of valueor the occasionally lucky player quits while she is ahead. Ever since the Tulalips and other tribes in Washington and elsewhere in the country won the right to operate Las Vegas-style gambling on reservation lands, the economic fortunes of manybut not alltribes have changed dramatically. Tribal casinos now account for about half of the annual take of the state's billion-dollar-plus gambling industry. A key factor in the tribal success, however, has been the tribes' exclusive control of the slots.
"It was the slots that really made the difference," recalls John McCoy, Tulalip tribal business manager and a Democrat now serving in the state House of Representatives from Snohomish County's 38th District. "That was when the revenues made a significant leap."
A big enough leap to draw the attention of non-Indian gambling entrepreneurs, some of them homegrown, others from more distant parts. Together they have become a potent force for expanding state gambling. They want non-Indians to be able to run the same games that the Indian casinos haveespecially the lucrative slotsand they are paying a small fortune in an effort to get there. If they are successful, Indian leaders fear that their still-new grip on economic self-sufficiency could slip away.
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Tulalip Reservation: signs of prosperity.
(Jerry Gay) |
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A group calling itself the Entertainment Industry Coalition (EIC) is made up of non-Indian owners of mini-casinos, taverns, restaurants, and bowling alleys. A measure introduced at the start of the recent session of the Legislature would give non-Indian businesses the same number of slot machines as are now licensed to tribal casinos.
As the regular session began last January, the EIC forces were given a scant chance of rounding up the 60 percent of both houses that would be needed under state law to approve an expansion of gambling. But as the session adjourned last Sunday without adoption of a budget, and legislators started preparing for the May 12 special session, the EIC found itself with a potent new ally: the Washington Education Association. The WEA was backing the coalition's slot machine measure as a possible means of getting raises for teachers in the absence of a tax increase soughtunsuccessfully thus farby House Democrats. The campaign is spearheaded by EIC executive director Lincoln Ferris and veteran Olympia lobbyist Vito Cecchi.
Ferris is the former vice president of community relations for Services Group of America, owned by Tom Stewart, the Vashon Island conservative Republican who was handed one of the largest fines ever in a federal election-fraud conviction$5 million. For the past few years, Ferris has operated his own public affairs and lobbying firm representing business clients.
A $300 MILLION JACKPOT?
While many view the tribes sympathetically as underdogs in a battle against big-time gambling interests to protect their prosperity, Ferris has tackled that image straight on. His defense of the EIC case accuses the tribal casinos of causing a decline in gambling revenues to charitable groups and profligate use of tribal funds. He also claims that non-tribal gambling would pay taxes that the Indian casinos don't have to pay, generating more revenue for the state in tough budget years like this one.
But tribal leaders counter that as sovereign governments, they have their own use for casino revenues.
"All of our revenues are a tax base," says Ron Allen, leader of the Jamestown S'Kallam Tribe. "We have pointed out that Indian communities have suffered at the lower end of the totem pole when it came to funding for our communities."
