Word: slots
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...local government services. California officials estimate that the tribes will pay about $100 million a year into the fund. By contrast, Connecticut collected $332 million last year from its two Indian casinos, Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun. If California tribes were paying at the same rate--25% of slot revenue--the state would collect up to $1 billion...
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...
...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...
...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 III gaming because, she says, "Nebraska would not negotiate a tribal gaming compact after six years of negotiations...
Casting about for a way out of the dilemma, Schulte and Santee Sioux representatives traveled to Washington in February 2001 to seek the NIGC's guidance. Commission officials advised the tribe to install pseudo slot machines--like those used by the Seminoles--to get around the Class III controversy. The tribe complied--at a substantial economic cost. With the switch to the pseudo slots, Thomas says, revenue has fallen by two-thirds. The casino employs only 15 people, and the income barely covers operating costs. There is no longer any money for tribal programs...