A bill by Rep. Jared Huffman would allow the Lytton Pomo tribe to put land into trust in Windsor, Sonoma County, but would prevent it from opening a second casino. The tribe currently operates a Class II casino in the Bay Area.
The bill reinforces the tribe’s recent agreement with the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors not to build another casino for 22 years and adds the restriction that the tribe could never build a casino north of Highway 12, from Santa Rosa to the Mendocino County line. The agreement also calls for the tribe to pay the county a one-time fee of $6.1 million. It also agreed to abide by county land use regulations for most of the development.
Huffman’s bill has already gotten thumbs up from the House Natural Resources Committee, one step removed from a voter before the full house. Huffman is confident that U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is a staunch opponent of urban casinos, will support it. Governor Jerry Brown also supports it.
Not all Windsor residents like the bill, because they don’t want the tribe to develop 511 acres that is currently in play to be put into trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Huff’s bill needs to beat that action or the casino restriction won’t be included. The BIA has had the application under consideration for seven years and the Obama Administration has said that its goal is to create another 200,000 acres of reservation land by the time his term ends.
The tribe wants to build over 350 homes, a 200-room resort hotel and a winery.
Huffman says he believes the tribe when it says it has no current plans for a casino but told the Press Democrat, “if things change in the future, why wouldn’t they build a casino, if there’s no limitation or protection? Tribes are always interested in economic development. Who could blame them if there was no prohibition?” He says his bill will make that protection “bulletproof.”
Cheryl Schmit of the casino watchdog group Stand Up for California says the bill is a good deal. Although the tribe’s memorandum of understanding with the county might be enforceable, making its provisions part of an Act of Congress will make sure.
“It protects Sonoma County going to court and not being successful, if for any reason in the future there is a challenge to the MOA. Having it in this federal statute with a limit on gaming protects the county,” she told the Press Democrat.
That doesn’t satisfy Citizens for Windsor, which has collected 2,000 signatures expressing displeasure with Huffman’s bill. Huffman commented, “They don’t like the fact that there would be this sovereign land right in their backyard that would not be subject to all the same rules — taxation and other things that they are — they think that’s unfair and maybe it is. But the reality is that the Lyttons almost certainly qualify for trust status, based on everything we know.”
