JUNE 10, 17:18 EDT
Reno Stays Out of Gambling Dispute
By ANNE GEARAN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Janet Reno told Indian leaders Wednesday she will stay out of a dispute between California tribes and the state's governor over casinos.
Tribes petitioned for her help in the $500 million state Indian gambling industry's fight to keep lucrative video slot machines that Gov. Pete Wilson has declared illegal.
``The federal government is not a party,'' to the fight, Reno said, turning down pleas for intervention by seven representatives of the more than 100 recognized California Indian groups.
After their meeting with Reno, tribal leaders and their lawyers said she appeared to side with them on the important issue of whether tribes can keep the disputed machines running while they are negotiating the machines' long-term use.
``We regard (Reno's) remarks as significant and new,'' said Lanny Davis, lawyer for the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, which brought tribal representatives to Washington for three days of lobbying on the issue this week. ``We interpret it that we do not have to shut down the gaming operations,'' Davis said.
Reno was silent on the topic, even when asked a direct question by one tribal leader, and urged the tribes to sue if Wilson does not bargain with them in good faith. But Justice Department officials who spoke on background later said Reno agrees with the state that the machines are illegal and must be turned off.
States must negotiate casino gambling agreements with tribes under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. Wilson signed a deal with one tribe in March that would lower casino profits by limiting the type and number of slot machines they can use. Other tribes claim Wilson then asked them to either sign a similar compact or shut down their casinos.
Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh scoffed at the suggestion that Reno sided with the tribes over shutting down the machines, since federal prosecutors have declared in court that the machines are illegal.
``All I can tell you is that the U.S. attorneys (in California) have cease-and-desist actions pending in federal court,'' Walsh said.
Only a few of the 38 tribes operating casinos in California have agreed to either option. Federal prosecutors are trying to seize 14,000 slot machines from those tribes that refused.
The slot machines bring in about 75 percent of all revenue for many tribes, Indian leaders said. Shutting them down, even briefly, would end the run of new prosperity many tribes have enjoyed in the 1990s, said Mark Macarro, tribal chairman of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians.
California law allows so-called ``lottery'' slots, which uses players' money to build a winning pot just as state lottery games do. But the Indian casino slots operate like those in Las Vegas, where players receive a predetermined jackpot and the casino takes a percentage of all money put into the machine.
So far, Wilson has refused to talk with tribes that still use the machines.
In a letter to the California congressional delegation Wednesday, Wilson said he has acted properly.
``Stripped of their rhetoric, these tribes want to preserve their monopoly over unregulated and illegal gambling, and therefore seek to persuade U.S. law enforcement to stop enforcing federal laws against those tribes who are violating it,'' Wilson wrote.