Fund for poor tribes

proposed

By Patricia Lopez

Star Tribune

      As Gov. Tim Pawlenty pursues talks with several of the state's poorest Indian bands on opening an off-reservation metro-area casino for them, Mille Lacs Band leader Melanie Benjamin on Tuesday proposed a $50 million tribe-funded foundation to help those same poorer bands.

      The proposal came on the same day that a broad-based antigambling coalition announced its determination to stop Pawlenty from pursuing a metro-area casino or any other expansion of gambling in Minnesota.

      All this comes while legislators are just starting to pick their way through an array of gambling proposals, most of which are intended to help ease the state's budget crunch.

      Benjamin said her proposal, which came during her annual State of the Band address, has been in the works for months and is not specifically intended as an end-run around Pawlenty's attempts to gain a share of gambling profits for the state.

      "As a band, we have an obligation to share with people who do not have enough," Benjamin said. "Let's move beyond the schoolyard bullies who want to divide us."

      Pawlenty had been pushing hard to get Mille Lacs and other bands and tribes that make up the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association to pay $350 million to the state annually in return for a guarantee of exclusivity on casino gambling. Meeting a cold reception, he has turned to the Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake bands, which are the state's largest, poorest and most remote bands and who have benefited the least from on-reservation casinos.

      Benjamin said her proposal would have Mille Lacs partner with metro-area bands.

      They would create a foundation that would provide grants to those poorer bands.

      That proposal now goes to the band's Assembly.

      Citizens Against Gambling Expansion (CAGE), which registered as a lobbying group on Monday, said on Tuesday that it will launch a grass-roots campaign to stop the Legislature from approving any expansion of gambling, whether it is an off-reservation casino, slot machines at Canterbury Park, a Las Vegas-style casino at the Mall of America, or harness racing that includes casino gambling.

      Jack Meeks, a Republican national committeeman who heads the bipartisan group, said it represents a diverse constituency, from the progressive Joint Religious Legislative Coalition to the socially conservative Minnesota Family Council and the Minnesota Taxpayers League, from former DFL Gov. Wendell Anderson to former Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Sullivan. The group is united, Meeks said, by its opposition to gambling expansion.

      "We all know that the social costs outweigh any perceived benefits," he said.

      Former Rep. Carl Jacobson, also with the group, said Pawlenty and legislators are still looking for "easy answers, pain-free answers," to the state's budget problems.

      The solution, he said, is not for Minnesota to become the "Vegas of the North."

      Meeks said his group and its members will talk to church congregations, send out mailings, buttonhole legislators and do what they can to stop the profusion of gambling proposals now under consideration.

      Their first volley is a booklet titled "Minnesota Nice Meets Vegas Nasty," which went out to legislators on Tuesday. It leads off luridly, warning of "Cabins and call girls, hot dish and hot money, lutefisk and lust," should Las Vegas interests be allowed to set up commercial casinos in Minnesota.

Swift reaction

      Reaction from Pawlenty came swiftly on Tuesday, with communications director Brian McClung telling reporters just hours later that he had met with the governor and that Pawlenty had pronounced CAGE and its leaders "misguided."

      Gambling, McClung said, is "expanding every hour in this state. The only question is whether 85 percent of the Indians and the rest of the state will have some benefit."

      McClung said that Pawlenty had not yet examined Benjamin's proposal but that discussion of how to help the state's three poorest bands "is a conversation that's long overdue." House Speaker Steve Sviggum was more skeptical.

      "Why now?" Sviggum asked of Benjamin's proposal. "I'm sure she's honest with her agenda, but why now and not last year or six years ago, when those tribes were asking for fairness? Is it time to buy somebody off? That's pretty obvious from the standpoint of the timing."

      Sviggum said CAGE's efforts are equally suspect. "Jack [Meeks] is a friend of mine," Sviggum said. "If Jack Meeks would like an author on a bill to eliminate all gaming at 18 Indian casinos and the lottery, the speaker will be their author. But my sense is that what he wants to do is protect Indian gaming, their monopoly and their no-tax situation, which I think is very unfair."

      Brian Rusche of the Joint Religious Legislative Council said his group has no desire to protect Indian gambling. "Gambling produces nothing of value, creates no new wealth. From a faith perspective, it is corrupt, empty." However, he said he recognizes that the federal government gave Indians gambling rights years ago as a means of economic development. "I consider it a cockamamie scheme to somehow make the swindled the swindlers," he said.

      Since the state cannot stop the Indians from pursuing casino gambling on their own reservations, he said, it could at least not expand it.

      "The state should not be a direct participant in such a harmful activity," Rusche said.