Voters in the California town of Elk Grove in Sacramento County will have the extremely rare experience of deciding whether an Indian casino may be built in their town.
Elk Grove City Clerk Jason Lindgren has confirmed that the petitioners, who in November gathered 14,800 signatures, but only needed 8,896 valid ones, met that threshold with 11,565 verified signatures. The petition was certified at the city council’s January 11 meeting.
The voters will be deciding whether to confirm a decision made several months ago by the city council to allow the owner of a mall out of a development agreement with the city in which the Howard Hughes Co. would sell 36 acres of its Outlet Collection at Elk Grove mall property to the Wilton Rancheria Tribe for its proposed $400 million casino resort. Only unencumbered property may be put into trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for a tribe.
The tribe’s proposed casino, to be located near Highway 99, would include a 12-story hotel with 302 rooms, 2,000 slots, 84 gaming tables, and 30,000 square feet of event space. The Howard Hughes Co. has said that the casino is a vital part of finishing the mall.
The vote is expected to be scheduled for this summer. Unless the city council decides to voluntarily repeal its decision that it made October 12 of 2016. Otherwise it would be legally required to set a special election date. Currently the fact that the legal petition has been submitted suspends the council’s action. The council is expected to decide what to do at its January 25 meeting.
City Clerk Lindgren said, “Once that petition becomes certified then that continues the suspension of the ordinance. Once the petition is certified, then the city is at the decision point about what to do next.”
The initial campaign against the casino was led largely in secret until in December a filing with the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission revealed that Emeryville-based Knighted Ventures LLC was funding it. The company provides employees to card rooms in Sacramento—card rooms that would be at a significant disadvantage if an Indian casino were to open in Elk Grove. The card rooms are Parkwest Casino Lotus and Parkwest Casino Cordova.
However, an Elk Grove casino would also threaten the market share of several area Indian casinos that are within a 40-mile radius, including the United Auburn Indian Community’s Thunder Valley Casino Resort and the Red Hawk casino near Shingle Springs.
Tribal Chairman Raymond Hitchcock reacted to the certification of the signatures with this statement: “A campaign funded by gaming interests from outside Elk Grove is disingenuous and wrong. They don’t care about the people of Elk Grove. They care about protecting their business interests from fair market competition.”
Supporting the Elk Grove casino is Region Business, a consortium of building contractors. He said last week, “Now that people know who it is, and know that it is just an out-of-town card room … the response that we’ve seen from the community is an uproar.”
It is almost unheard of for a town’s voters to have the opportunity to vote up or down for a tribal casino. Normally that decision is made by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Indian Gaming Commission, along with, to a less degree, the state legislature and the governor. Normally local residents have little or no say so.
Elk Grove Mayor Steve Ly told the Elk Grove Citizen that the casino is necessary for the mall to be completed. The city has been trying to get the mall completed for several years. “This casino may be our last chance to be able to save the mall,” he said.
