Tohono O’odhams were gaming state over casino all along
Support for a new gambling palace in Glendale always has turned on a single issue, a single question:
Just how cool are you with being lied to?
We’re not talking about being “lied to” in the way that a clever advertising campaign makes something look better than it is. Or how some politicians will say anything to get their way. We’re not talking about “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it” kinds of lies here. That’s pe- destrian stuff.
No, if you want to believe that a new tribal-owned casino in the center of the West Valley is a good idea — and, truly, many people do — you have to place yourself in one of two categories.
Either you have to maintain an almost aggressive ignorance of some very recent, carefully documented history ... or you have to declare yourself indifferent to having participated in a sensational, statewide dupe-fest.
In 2002, 17 Arizona Native American tribes drained their checkbooks in support of Proposition 202, one of three tribalgaming initiatives on the ballot that year and the only one that lined up tribal interests with those of state political leaders like then-Gov. Jane Dee Hull.
The tribes went all in. All told, the tribes and their supporters spent more than $30 million promoting Prop. 202. It was by far the most expensive contest of the year in Arizona. They spent crazy money.
But for the tribes, it would
be worth it. Gaming revenue would do a lot for tribal selfdetermination. It would help reverse generations of poverty. And, likewise, it would give the communities on the other side of the reservation borders a sense of certainty about the spread of gaming. Which is to say, it wouldn’t spread any farther.
Specifically, Prop. 202 meant no more casinos being built in Maricopa County. It would set a hard cap. Seven casinos in the Phoenix area. No more. And, as things turned out, 16 of 17 of those tribes meant it. With all their hearts. And, today, they are enjoying the fruits of their honesty and hard work. You don’t have to be wild about gambling to appreciate the improved quality of life in Indian country.
The leaders of one tribe, however, didn’t mean it. Long before the compacts were signed, and even as they were spending millions on campaign advertising that made promises they were planning not to keep, the elected leaders of the Tohono O’Odham Nation of southern Arizona were laying the groundwork for a casino deep in urban Maricopa County.
Years before voters would trundle off to their polls to earnestly log their votes on behalf of Tohono council members were out scouting land in Glendale and elsewhere, plotting how to accomplish the wrong thing.
Documents unearthed in the course of a federal lawsuit filed by other tribes against the Tohono O’odhams depict a calculated plan to betray the spirit of the compromise at the heart of Prop. 202.
More than a year before the vote, according to court filings, executives of the tribe’s development company were discussing the feasibility of a West Valley casino.
The evidence includes handwritten notes by Tohono council members at a meeting in 2001. The notes included, “Buying Land West Phx, put in trust and build a casino,” and “Put it in a shell company — need to keep it quite expecially when negociations of compact State.” (Grammar and spelling are the original wording.)
Years later, the Tohono O’odhams and their lawyers would make it all public. In 2009, they declared their intent to take land they owned in Glendale into federal trust, which would clear the path for building their casino. The tribe’s lawyers tut-tutted all that 2002 stuff about promises to build no additional casinos in Maricopa County as “extraneous noise” and “erroneous statements.”
Back in 2002, however, the Tohono O’odhams were busy spending millions of tribal dollars on advertising that made exactly that case, that repeated exactly those “erroneous statements.” You’d think they would have jumped at the chance at the time to cut through all that extraneous noise and correct the record. Guess not. For a lot of people, of course, truth abuse doesn’t matter. Water under the bridge. Building the casino will put people to work. And all that. But if the tribe’s leaders should get their way, there is no reason to believe it ends with one more casino.
During a 2012 deposition related to the federal lawsuit against the Tohono plans, a tribal lawyer refused to concede that the Glendale casino necessarily would be the last one the tribe would build in the Valley.
Said attorney Daniel J. Quigley: “If the (Tohono O’odham) nation acquired lands ... in the locations that you specified, and if those lands were taken into trust, and if those lands were eligible for gaming, then the compact, I believe, would allow the nation to conduct gaming on those lands, assuming they met the requirements.”
More casinos. More mockery of Prop. 202 and its earnest supporters. But, hey. At least the guy was being honest.