By James P. Sweeney
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
August 25, 1998
SACRAMENTO -- With time running short, legislation that would ratify California's first comprehensive Indian gambling compact cleared the Senate with little trouble yesterday.
The bipartisan 23-9 vote sent the measure to the Assembly floor for a showdown in the week remaining before this year's session is set to adjourn next Monday.
One lawmaker, an ally of more than two dozen tribes opposed to the compact, suggested that the fight may be all but over.
"This is where we had the greatest chance of stopping it," Assemblyman Tony Cardenas, D-Los Angeles, lamented as he stood in the rear of the Senate chamber.
Cardenas said prospects of blocking the bill in the Assembly "don't look good."
Privately, two sources working on behalf of the measure said they have a comfortable margin in the lower house, where Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa has been quietly aiding the effort.
Seeking to end nearly a decade of stalemate and legal haggling over tribal gambling in California, the legislation would endorse a model compact painstakingly drafted during 17 months of negotiations between Gov. Pete Wilson's administration and San Diego's Pala Band of Mission Indians.
Ten other tribes -- including the Barona, Sycuan and Viejas of San Diego County -- have agreed to the basic terms of the accord and have compacts that also would be ratified by the legislation.
A 1988 federal law that opened up Indian gambling permits tribes to operate those games already legal in a state. Casino-style games, however, must be covered by a tribal-state compact.
Wilson and California tribes had been at an impasse over video slot machines. The Republican governor, backed by a series of court rulings, contends that the lucrative machines are illegal in California. The Pala compact substitutes a limited number of lottery-based video games.
Opposition tribes rejected the compact, rallying instead around a November initiative that would legalize and allow an unlimited expansion of video slots.
Some tribes, however, may not be able to wait that long. Federal prosecutors are in court seeking the forfeiture of the disputed video slot machines. In San Diego, a federal judge has warned tribes that their compacts must be ratified by the Legislature if they do not want to face forfeiture actions.
During a pointed debate yesterday, Senate President Pro Tempore John Burton -- a San Francisco liberal carrying the compact legislation for the Republican governor -- accused the state's most powerful tribes of trying to hoard the wealth.
"I find it morally offensive that the big tribes with the big money are trying to tie a can to the smaller tribes," Burton said.
But Sen. Steve Peace, D-El Cajon, charged that the compact tramples on tribal sovereignty. He alluded in large part to provisions that would guarantee each of the state's 100 federally recognized bands a share of Indian gambling profits.
"Over 200 years, only one thing has remained consistent in the court interpretation of sovereignty," Peace said. "Each Indian nation has its own independent sovereignty ... there is no such thing as the ability to socialize or to collectivize the sovereignty of Indians."
Other opponents, such as Sen. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, said the public should be allowed to settle the matter through Proposition 5, the tribal gambling initiative on the November ballot.
Mary Ann Andreas, tribal chairwoman of the Morongo band, a Banning tribe that operates one of the state's largest casinos, said the Senate vote was not unexpected.
"We will prevail on Proposition 5; we will win," Andreas said. "This is a battle, not the war."
The ballot measure, if successful, would supersede the compacts.
Pala Chairman Robert Smith and the leaders of several other tribes with pending compacts applauded the Senate outcome.
"Our compacts ... recognize our sovereign status and will permit our tribes to continue to advance economically, while sharing reasonable regulatory authority ... with the state," Smith and the others said in a joint statement.
Twelve Democrats, 10 Republicans and the Senate's lone Independent voted for the bill. Five Democrats and four Republicans opposed it.
Sen. Dave Kelley, an Idyllwild Republican whose district includes the Barona, Sycuan and Viejas reservations, voted for the measure after abstaining earlier this year when similar legislation moved through the Senate. That bill remains stalled in an Assembly committee.
Sen. Dede Alpert, D-Coronado, also voted in support. Sens. Bill Craven, R-Oceanside, and Ray Haynes, R-Temecula, abstained.