A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled for the Spokane Tribe of Washington’s Airway Heights casino. The judges upheld a lower court that dismissed claims by a rival gaming tribe the Kalispel, that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had wrongly approved the casino.
In 2015, the BIA approved the request by the Spokane Tribe to build an off-reservation casino two miles from the Kalispel’s Northern Quest Resort & Casino in Airway Heights.
The Spokane Tribe’s Business Council hailed the ruling: “The ruling recognizes what the Spokane Tribe has always known; the Tribe has a right to conduct gaming on its own ancestral lands.”
In objecting to the BIA’s decision, the Kalispel Tribe had said it did not have the authority and said the decision itself was “arbitrary and capricious” because it didn’t consider the financial impact of a casino so close to the existing one. It claims it will lose more than $30 million a year.
Kalispel Tribal Council Vice Chairman Curt Holmes said the tribe was “deeply disappointed,” and added that tribes “have historically faced an upward climb when asking for accountability from the federal government.” He added, “This was about the Kalispel Tribe’s duty to its people to stand for what is right and hold the DOI (Department of the Interior) to its trust responsibility.”
In a separate but related development, the Kalispel tribe in May offered to buy the Spokane County’s raceway in Airway Heights for $4.75 million. Many county officials would like to rid the County of something they feel it never should have purchased in the first place.
However, the Airway Heights City Council is not enthusiastic about this idea, especially if the tribe seeks to put the land into federal trust, which would remove it from the tax rolls. The council has asked the County to add provisions to the deal so that the land will still be taxable.
Airway Heights City Manager Albert Tripp said in a statement: “You remove those, it removes the ability of a community to effectively provide public services, and thus the costs get spread around to others.” If the tribe reopens the raceway and patrons use city-maintained roads, and get into accidents that city emergency personnel answer, the city will take the hit, he said, especially if the land is put into trust.
Airway Heights Mayor Sonny Weathers added, “On one side of the scale is our excitement surrounding the potential associated with this opportunity.” He continued, “while the other side holds our concern over challenges related to maintaining systems, services, and infrastructure to meet the functional needs of the community at predictable rates.”
The city also wants assurances that the racetrack will remain a racetrack. The Spokane Raceway Park in its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, produced many great racecar drivers. It has declined in the last 20 years, and Spokane County bought it at auction in 2008 for $4 million. The County has had mixed success operating it, and it hasn’t generated much tax revenue for County or city.
