Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn at the U.S. Department of Interior may decide in 30 to 60 days if a final ruling will be made on whether a 10.5-acre parcel of land owned by the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma in Park City, Kansas should be taken into trust for a casino. A memorandum on the issue recently was filed in Kansas District Court.
If approved, the Wyandotte have said they would develop a $20-$30 million Class II casino in Park City, with 1,200 slot machines and a small restaurant. The facility could expand in the future if the tribe negotiated a compact with the state for Class II gaming. A consultant for the state said a Wyandotte casino, which would not pay taxes, could lower gambling revenue at the state-owned Kansas Star Casino near Mulvane by 21. 5 percent.
The tribe claims it purchased the acreage with land-claim settlement funds, based on a 1984 law which gave the tribe $100,000. The Wyandotte said it spent $25,000 of that money to buy the Park City parcel in 1992. The state of Kansas sued, claiming the tribe mixed the settlement funds with tribal money and four years later spent $100,00 plus $80,000 in accumulated interest to buy land for its Kansas City casino—and that fulfilled the requirements of the law. The tribe argued it ultimately won the battle of the Kansas City property after 12 years of legal action, and that confirmed it had used settlement funds for the Park City land.
The tribe has said that the Interior Department came close to a decision on its Park City application, in October 2010 and February 2012, but both times the state of Kansas delayed the process with letters and documents to the Interior Department.
The Wyandottes sued the Interior Department in July 2011 for unreasonably delaying processing its application. Last April, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson ordered the department to provide quarterly status reports on the processing of the application. The latest report said, “These materials are voluminous and the review of them has been time consuming.”
In November, staff from the Office of the Special Trustees for American Indians, which manages tribal trusts, gave their view on the situation to the Solicitor’s office, which will finalize its memorandum for the assistant secretary “as soon as possible,” the report said.
Meanwhile, Wyandotte Chief Billy Friend said, “Our point with them was, it doesn’t matter how you do the accounting, the fact remains that the first $25,000 was spent on the land in Park City. We’re confident there’s only way to rule in the case, and that’s to take the land into trust.”
