Opponents of an Indian casino in Elk Grove, California have launched a lawsuit at the city council, alleging that some members secretly colluded with the tribe to put a casino within city limits.
The lawsuit claims council members privately talked with representatives of the Wilton Rancheria to assist the tribe’s efforts to persuade the Bureau of Indian Affairs to take 36 acres into trust for a $400 million casino.
The attorney for the resident, Brigit Barnes, said she filed the lawsuit to force the release of records that the city refused to release in spite of a California Public Records Act request. She says that records she has seen, including some preliminary documents and screen shots of text messages leads her to conclude that officials may have privately helped the tribe to put the 36 acres into trust.
A spokesman for the city told the Sacramento Bee: “the city has complied with the Brown Act and the Public Records Act in all of its proceedings related to the casino project.”
Wilton Rancheria spokesman Bob Magnuson noted that a press contact on the press release for the lawsuit was listed as Roger Salazar, who is also a spokesman for Knighted Ventures LLC, a company that is a contractor to the area card clubs and backed the signature drive that tried to force the decision to sell city land to the tribe onto the ballot. This indicated that the lawsuit is being funded by card club interests, said Magnuson.
Last year the city council passed an ordinance that allowed the modification of a development agreement the city had with the Howard Hughes Corp. The modification allowed the company to sell 36 acres within an unfinished mall to the tribe.
Foes of the casino rose up and, funded by Knighted, gathered enough signatures to force the city council to either put the matter on the ballot or reverse its decision.
Texts sent back and forth between the city and tribal Chairman Raymond Hitchcock show that the chairman sought to get the council to postpone action on the referendum at the same time that a council member urged Hitchcock to push the BIA to accept the land into trust—which would make any council action moot.
The council delayed the vote until February 8 when it voted to reverse its decision, which Barnes says was deliberate because it knew the decision wouldn’t become official until February. They knew that the BIA would accept the land into trust before that date.
Barnes believes that the lawsuit could unearth records that show that the city violated the state’s open records law, the Brown Act, which she hopes will prompt the BIA to revisit its decision to put the land into trust.
Although the BIA has already taken that action, it has not published the action in the Federal Register, which is considered the final act to putting land into trust.
“We want them to kick it back to Elk Grove and let the people have something to say about this,” Barnes told the Bee.
