Given the number of body blows taken by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s planned $1 billion casino in the last few years, Chairman Cedric Cromwell could be forgiven for being on the ropes.
But that’s not the way the Massachusetts tribal chairman rolls. In a November 4 press release, Cromwell declared confidence that the Taunton casino will be built. “Make no mistake that the tribe is long past the point of no return,” he stated. “We have all the rights, all the plans, all the support, and all determination to finish what we started. Timing is in the hands of the litigation and legislation working their ways through the courts and Congress. But the Taunton development remains real and ready.”
The statement said, “The tribe’s development on our Taunton reservation lands is not a question of ‘if’ or even ‘how’ but merely ‘when.’ ”
Nevertheless, the tribe’s fate is largely dependent on others at this point. In 2016, it obtained funding for the $1 billion First Light Resort and Casino from Genting Malaysia, the world’s largest casino developer. It then broke ground that year after 320 acres, including half in Taunton and the rest on Martha’s Vineyard was put into trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the Obama administration.
However, a successful court challenge by local opponents of the casino ground the construction to a halt. Reacting to the judge’s ruling that the Department of the Interior—now in the Trump administration—had used faulty reasoning in putting the land into trust, the department did a one-eighty. It ruled that the tribe didn’t quality to put land into trust because it wasn’t under federal jurisdiction in 1934, the year of the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act.
The Genting group had been largely funding the tribal government, which ran up $500 million in debt. Genting admitted that it was unlikely to get any of that money back in a report to Malaysia’s equivalent of the SEC.
Last year the tribal government began running on fumes and cut back drastically on member benefits and employees. This frayed the tribe’s political fiber and led to the current effort to recall Cromwell and some fellow council members.
At the same time the tribe, whose efforts are still backed by Genting in this arena, is suing the Interior Department to try to get the ruling reversed again.
The final linchpin in the Mashpees’ hopes is a bill that would restore by act of Congress the earlier land-into-trust ruling. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act (HR 312) has passed the House of Representatives but faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
Cromwell emphasizes all of the casino project’s positives: “We had a compact signed and approved into law in the Commonwealth in 2013, before any commercial licenses were granted and long before they had any shovels in the ground. We have had an Intergovernmental Agreement in place with the city of Taunton since 2012, and have paid well over $3 million dollars to meet and exceed all our obligations under that agreement to this day.”
The tribe’s travails, and the possibility that the First Light Casino might have a glimmer of life, has prompted the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to ask for a legal analysis and update from its staff.
The MGC has no direct influence on whether the tribe builds a casino, but it does have jurisdiction over whether a third casino resort will ever be built in Region C, which encompasses the southeastern part of the state, and includes Taunton.
In 2016, when the Taunton casino was still very much alive, the commission denied an application for a casino on the Brockton fairgrounds. Some commissioners had expressed the concern that having two casinos within such proximity would dilute the market.
At the October 24 meeting where the commission asked for an update, State Senator Marc Pacheco, whose district includes Taunton, told the panel “It’s absolutely quite appropriate that the commission get updated on the legal analysis relative to what’s happening on the federal level.” He implied that a “change in the White House” after next year might make the Taunton casino a possibility again.
He added, “I’m here to ask the commission to continue with your thoughtful deliberation about everything that is going on and not make a decision.”
