(Page A-3 )
17-Jul-1998 Friday
SACRAMENTO -- When a state court sided with California's big gambling
tribes and ruled that the Legislature must approve tribal-state gambling
compacts, the verdict was hailed as a huge victory for the Indians.
But that decision, if upheld, could cost the tribes another hard-fought
legal judgment worth at least $14 million, and potentially millions more in
future earnings.
In the bruising political battle over a landmark gambling accord negotiated
between San Diego County's Pala band and Gov. Pete Wilson, opposition
tribes took the fight to court, contending the governor does not have
unilateral authority to execute such compacts.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly agreed, concluding late last
month that the Legislature must ratify tribal gambling agreements.
The ruling immediately turned up the political pressure on a pending
measure that would ratify the Pala compact. But it also raised questions
about the status of five little-known compacts that Wilson and former Gov.
George Deukmejian signed between 1989 and 1991.
Those agreements gave five tribes -- including Barona, Sycuan and Viejas of
San Diego County -- permission to offer horse racing simulcasts and
off-track betting at their casinos. None of the five was submitted to the
Legislature for approval.
Those compacts also prompted litigation over a small percentage of the
revenues that the state had been collecting as a fee from the casinos.
After six years of litigation, the tribes appeared to have won last month
when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
A federal appeals court had ordered the state to put some $14 million into
a special trust account to cover the amount in dispute.
But state attorneys say they will ask a federal judge to consider whether
the Superior Court ruling has for the time being effectively rendered the
off-track betting compacts invalid.
Deputy Attorney General Manuel Medeiros said yesterday that the state has
decided to seek a status conference before U.S. District Judge David Levi
to discuss the legal implications of Judge Connelly's ruling on the
off-track betting case.
The state plans to appeal Connelly's ruling. But if it is upheld, "the
off-track betting compacts are arguably invalid," Medeiros said. And, if
that's the case, the state will ask whether the tribes should be paid
anything, Medeiros said.
Tribal attorneys were not surprised by the development, although one said
the legal uncertainties involved have been recognized from the outset. A
1989 opinion from the Legislature's counsel warned that tribal compacts
appeared to require legislative ratification, said George Forman, Sycuan's
attorney.
"This is an issue that could have been raised at any time," Forman said.
"Under the law, there comes a point where a case is over. From our point of
view, when the Supreme Court denied (hearing the appeal), this case was
over.
"This is one more commitment that the state is trying to weasel out of.
Even if they are right, and I don't think they are, it could only have
aprospective effect because, if the compacts were never valid, then the
state certainly has no right to those fees, either. They should never have
been collected."