A federal judge has ruled that a lower-level secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs can indeed sign off on a decision to put land into trust for a California tribe, a formerly landless tribe that achieved recognition in 2009.
And with that 27-page decision in its pocket the Wilton Rancheria is moving forward on its long sought casino project, a $400 million facility with 2,500 slot machines on 35.9 acres in Elk Grove, in an unfinished outlet mall. It will include a 302-room hotel, one of the largest convention centers in Sacramento County, a concert venue, restaurants and other amenities, built and managed by Boyd Gaming.
It will enable the Howard Hughes Corp. to finish the Elk Grove Outlet Collection Mall, creating thousands of jobs, according to the tribe.
The land-into-trust decision was made by a Department of the Interior official on the last day of the Obama administration, January 19, 2017. Opponents of the decision, led by the casino watchdog group Stand Up for California charged that only the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs could make that determination and that that position was vacant at that time. Instead the decision was made by Larry Roberts, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.
That was good enough, the judge ruled. Judge Trevor McFadden wrote: “Mr. Roberts, as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, was authorized to exercise the AS-IA’s non-exclusive authority, including the authority to make final fee-to-trust decisions.”
Stand Up hinted at a possible appeal, but Tribal Chairman Raymond Hitchcock was elated. “We are grateful to the United States government for defending and upholding their federal trust responsibility to our tribe and for protecting our inherent right to have tribal trust lands, not only for now, but for generations to come,” he told the Sacramento Bee.
Hitchcock, whose tribe lost its federal status in the 1950s, only to be restored in 2009, told Gambling Insider: “Our people, the Miwok, have lived in California for millennia. Our ancestors hunted and fished and lived off the land in what is now called the Sacramento Valley. Their home was a vast swathe of territory running from the American River drainage to the north, to the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, south to the entrance to Yosemite Valley and west to the delta of San Francisco Bay.”
According to Hitchcock, California’s tribes survived 150 years of “treaties made a broken, land confiscated and stolen.” “Our Miwok ancestors were promised a large area, 25 miles in length, as part of Treaty J, for their sole use and occupancy forever. That never happened, as the treaties were never ratified by Congress,” he said.
In 1927 the U.S. government acquired land for the Miwok people living in Sacramento County and created a Rancheria for them. But in 1958 Congress passed the California Rancheria Act that terminated Rancherias for 41 tribes. Its status was restored in 2009 after many years of campaigning by Hitchcock’s family.
But the tribe, which has 758 members, remained landless until it acquired land in Elk Grove. As Hitchcock puts it, “Achieving recognition did not magically solve the lasting and tragic impact of the termination of our tribal status. Among our members, the unemployment rate is 62 percent nearly 10-times the national average. Median annual income for a family of four is $20,000, well below the U.S. poverty line.”
The tribe acquired land in Elk Grove because its historic rancheria along the Cosumnes River would have created environmental issues. Another potential site, Galt, also would have required considerable environmental costs and a large investment in infrastructure. “The Elk Grove site, on the other hand, was readily accessible with built-out infrastructure and wide streets free of traffic with no residential development in the immediate area,” Hitchcock told Gambling Insider.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and the city of Elk Grove have each approved memorandums of understanding with the tribe with the tribe committing to pay $180 million over 20 years.
The California legislature approved of a Class III tribal state gaming compact with the tribe last October.
According to Hitchcock, “With these milestones achieved, we can now turn our focus to resort project planning and development. Under a ‘best case’ scenario, we would hope to break ground next summer and complete construction in 18 to 24 months.”
