Home The News North East News Wabanaki nations to add Indian casino question on November ballot

Wabanaki nations to add Indian casino question on November ballot

Written by Administrator

Friday, 26 February 2010

Wabanaki nations to add Indian casino question on November ballot By Gale Courey Toensing Story Published: Feb 26, 2010 INDIAN ISLAND, Maine – The Wabanaki nations are seizing a new opportunity to establish an Indian casino in Maine. The nations will place a “competing measure” question on the ballot during the November elections, asking voters to support an Indian casino, Penobscot Indian Nation Chief Kirk Francis said. According to Maine law, once an individual or party has collected enough signatures on a petition to add a referendum question to the ballot, a competing measure mechanism kicks in and another party can add a question. “It’s a way for people to address the whole issue,” Francis said. Black Bear Entertainment has provided the opportunity for the tribal nations to add their question to the ballot. Black Bear is an investment group of non-Native “successful Maine business people,” according to its Web site. The group has collected more than 100,000 signatures to put its proposal for a casino in Oxford County in western Maine on the ballot in November, if the legislature rejects the proposal, which it is likely to do since it has rejected similar proposals in the past. Peter Martin, the group’s spokesman, could not be reached for comment by press time since there is no listed phone number for Black Bear Entertainment. The Penobscots and Passamaquoddy nations have been trying to create Indian gaming in Maine for almost two decades, but every effort has been squashed. The state has interpreted the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act as prohibiting the three nations named in the act – the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Maliseet – from conducting gaming under the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. In recent efforts, voters in 2003 rejected a ballot measure for an Indian casino, but approved a non-Indian racino that resulted in Bangor’s Hollywood Slots – a full gaming casino and hotel facility 11 miles away from Indian Island where the Penobscots have a tightly controlled and limited bingo operation. The rejection continues to be viewed by many people as racist. In 2008, Gov. John Baldacci successfully defeated a bill that would have allowed the Penobscots to add 400 slot machines to its bingo operation. Later that year, voters rejected a Passamaquoddy Tribe initiative for a casino near the Canadian border. Francis said he’s optimistic about the new initiative. “It will do a couple of things. First, it will get our issues back out there again and, two, if the Black Bear Casino passes and ours doesn’t, it will really highlight the real problem in this state.” Black Bear made the nations an offer they could – and did – refuse, Francis said. “They said they recognized that we’ve done a lot of work in this area and they wanted us to benefit from the project. They wrote us (Penobscot) and Passamaquoddy into their bill. They wanted to give us ‘four points,’ they called it. There were a couple of problems. The Maliseets weren’t included and the Micmacs didn’t want to be included, and some of this group had worked with Passamaquoddy before and had actually sued them, so there was some bad blood there.” There was also the issue of not wanting to be on the receiving end of a hand out rather than an investor or active partner with more say in how the business is run, Francis said. “I think, basically, what they don’t want is the whole fairness argument coming up in the debate but sorry, you can’t avoid it. The problem is the tribes for 17 or 18 years have been trying to initiate gaming under federal legislation – which, by the way, if anybody ever reads IGRA they would see the terms are not terrible for states. So when you have this almost 20-year initiative going, it’s hard to swallow and watch others get a more beneficial look at their project when ours should have been addressed first.” If the ballot measure passes in the fall, all or some of the Wabanaki tribes, as they choose, will partner on a casino, which would likely be located in Washington County, the poorest area of the state where unemployment rates are astronomical. The details of the ballot question are being worked out by Donald Soctomah and Wayne Mitchell, the Passamaquoddy and Penobscots’ representatives in the legislature. Neither of them could be reached by press time. But, in a breath of fresh air, the tribes are getting support from an important state official. Baldacci, who has consistently opposed the expansion of gaming without voter approval – even though he unilaterally expanded the state lottery, is leaving office at the end of his term in November, and Democratic Senate President Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell, the leading contender for the governor’s seat, supports the tribal nations’ right to have casinos. “I’ve consistently supported gaming for the tribes because I believe it’s in their own right to determine what’s best for their economic development,” Mitchell said in a survey conducted by Casinos No!, a perennial anti-gaming group, Mitchell said she would not support the Oxford County casino initiative. In other gaming news, the Committee on Legal and Veterans Affairs approved a bill that will allow the federally recognized nations in Maine to use Class II machines in its bingo operations. The bill, which has been forwarded to the general assembly for a vote, was sponsored by Wayne Mitchell and co-sponsored by eight representatives and one senator. http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/85482817.html

 

< Prev		Next >