Word: casino
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Ordinarily states have no jurisdiction over sovereign Indian reservations. But if an Indian casino wants to offer Las Vegas--style games--like roulette, baccarat and blackjack--or slot machines in a state where such gambling is illegal, it must make a regulatory compact with the state. The Seminoles have 3,160 machines that look and perform like slots. Florida, which doesn't allow such high-stakes professional gambling, also known as Class III gaming, says the machines are illegal without a compact and wants the casinos closed down. The Seminoles claim the machines are not slots but "electronic terminals...
...Seminoles aren't waiting for the Federal Government's go-ahead. They have broken ground for a casino-hotel-entertainment complex with a new partner, Hard Rock Cafe International. The casino-resort, which will also have convention facilities, a beach club and a spa, will add to the Seminoles' lucrative gaming business. Last year the tribe's two casinos, in Hollywood and Tampa, made a combined profit of $216 million on revenue of $254 million--a return of 85%. By comparison, General Electric, often described by the media as America's best-managed company, reported net income of $13.7 billion...
...Santee Sioux casino is a more modest affair. Set on a 200-sq.-mi. reservation along the Missouri River in northeast Nebraska, the gambling hall was set up in a converted cafe and has 60 slot machines. But soon after the casino opened in 1996, federal authorities sought to close it. The issue: the tribe, like the Seminoles, has no compact with the state, though it wasn't for lack of trying...
...early 1990s the 2,700-member tribe sought a compact with Nebraska to open a casino on the reservation where some 1,000 members still live. Nebraska refused to negotiate. In February 1996, when the only private employer on the reservation, a pharmaceutical company, closed its small plant, the tribe, with 59% of its members living below the poverty line, went ahead anyway, opening the Ohiya Casino and installing Las Vegas--style slot machines. Thelma Thomas, a Santee Sioux who managed the casino, recalls that the tribe thought it had "the inherent sovereign right and legal right" to offer Class...
...gambling, seems to support the Santees' decision. The act says, "It is the committee's intent that the compact requirement for Class III not be used as a justification by a state for excluding Indian tribes from such gaming." No matter. The NIGC ordered the tribe to close the casino by May 1996. It did, with the understanding the state would work with the tribe on other economic development ventures...