San Diego Union-Tribune
By James P. Sweeney
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
August 17, 1998
SACRAMENTO -- Supporters of a model tribal-state gambling accord resumed their push for ratification Monday with a new bill, a new strategy and some new allies.
With scant notice, amendments embracing the compact negotiated by San Diego's Pala band and Gov. Pete Wilson were cut into an Assembly bill pending in the Senate.
The legislation, AB 1442, is expected to clear the upper house with little difficulty, setting up a showdown on the Assembly floor sometime before the Legislature is set to adjourn at the end of the month.
In addition to Pala, the new measure covers 10 other compacts that have been finalized in recent weeks, including those of San Diego County's three gaming tribes -- Barona, Sycuan and Viejas. An earlier bill defeated by an Assembly committee applied specifically only to Pala.
Without legislation approval, a Superior Court judge ruled the compacts are invalid.
"The hope is that people will realize that there are 11 tribes ... that it's no longer just one tribe and that these tribes basically want the ability to work with the state in determining their own destiny," said Senate leader John Burton, a San Francisco Democrat carrying the legislation for the Wilson administration. "Those who want to spend millions of dollars on an initiative are free to do that."
Wilson and California's gambling tribes have been at odds for most of the past decade over the operation of video slot machines on tribal lands around the state.
The Republican governor, backed by a series of court rulings, contends the lucrative machines are illegal in California. The Pala compact substitutes a limited number of lottery-based video game.
Opposition tribes rejected the compact, rallying instead around an initiative on the November ballot that would legalize and allow an unlimited expansion of video slots.
By using an Assembly bill that already has moved through the lower house, Burton hopes to go around the committee that narrowly blocked the original ratification measure.
Such attempts to rewrite bills in the opposite house, just before they return for a final vote, have drawn loud protests in the past and typically are referred back to a committee.
The critical vote figures to be on just such a motion. If supporters can defeat a request to send the bill back to committee, they should have enough votes to send it to the governor's desk.
Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who has worked behind the scenes on behalf of the compact, appeared to send another signal with the author of the new bill, Assemblyman Gilbert Cedillo.
A pair or Los Angeles Democrats, Villaraigosa and Cedillo were boyhood friends and are very close. Cedillo reportedly was the speaker's handpicked choice to fill a seat vacated by former Assemblyman Louis Caldera.
An ally of the opposition tribes conceded Monday that the prospects of blocking the legislation on the Assembly floor do not look good.
"The place where the tribes are at the greatest risk I think is on both the Senate floor and the Assembly floor," Assemblyman Tony Cardenas, D-Los Angeles, said. "I'm not very optimistic about any bill that gets to the floor."