Pawlenty urges tribes to plan casino

Three poorer northern tribes would benefit

By Patrick Sweeney

St. Paul Pioneer Press

WHITE EARTH, Minn. — Gov. Tim Pawlenty met Thursday with leaders of three Indian tribes seeking the state's backing for a new casino in the Twin Cities suburbs, and he encouraged them to continue planning but stopped short of endorsing their proposal.

Pawlenty said he asked representatives of the three tribes — the White Earth, Red Lake and Leech Lake bands of Ojibwe — to consider some "new ideas" in addition to the legislation they have unsuccessfully pushed in the past two legislative sessions.

"No decisions have been made, no commitments have been given," Pawlenty said in a news conference at the White Earth Tribal Council headquarters. "But the commitment is to further review those ideas on a hopefully expedited basis."

Pawlenty was deliberately vague about the proposals he discussed with the representatives of the three tribes.

"That's about all I can say, or want to say," he said in the news conference.

The three tribes represent about 80 percent of the state's American Indians. All three have casinos. But, because of the remote locations of the tribes' reservations in northwestern Minnesota, the tribes have missed most of the economic boon that a few tribes closer to the Twin Cities have received from casino gaming.

White Earth officials recently completed a report showing that only one-fourth of reservation residents have graduated from high school. The median household income on the reservation in 2000 was 61 percent of the statewide average.

The three tribal councils are expected to discuss Pawlenty's suggestions and make formal replies to them.

Two Democratic-Farmer-Labor senators, Keith Langseth of Glyndon and Jim Vickerman of Tracy, traveled to White Earth with Pawlenty in a state plane. Langseth said Pawlenty, even in private, talked in concepts rather than details when he discussed gaming.

"Even with us, I don't think he was zeroing in on it," Langseth said.

Langseth said Pawlenty talked, as he frequently has in the past, of giving tribes state approval for new gambling games in return for a share of their revenue. Langseth said he believed Pawlenty now plans to make public some sort of casino plan within a few weeks.

Langseth also said he believed Pawlenty was leaning toward supporting a casino at or near the Canterbury Park racetrack in Shakopee if a new Twin Cities casino is built. But Pawlenty explicitly said he did not urge the three tribes to enter into a partnership with Canterbury's owners.

Pawlenty also told the tribal leaders in several closed-door meetings that he would not support building a casino in any community that opposed it. In the past, Bloomington legislators have fought proposals for a Mall of America casino.

The three tribes have been conducting feasibility studies on possible casino sites in Albertville and Burnsville.

The so-called Indian Gaming Equity Act that the three tribes support was sponsored in the Senate last year by Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, and in the House by former Rep. Bill Haas, a Republican from Champlin. Haas, who was defeated in November, is now working as a lobbyist for the tribes.

The bill proposed a huge Twin Cities casino that would be built by the tribes and operated under the auspices of the Minnesota State Lottery. It would have more than 4,000 slot machines and blackjack tables. Backers said it would produce about $90 million a year for the state.

The legislation also called for the state to guarantee no additional non-Indian casinos would be licensed, or to pay the tribes damages if other casinos were authorized.

Irma Vizenor, chairwoman of the White Earth tribe, said Pawlenty, in a closed-door meeting with the three tribes' representatives, supported elements of that plan. She refused to say where he deviated from it.

"The governor has a number of ideas and concepts that fall pretty much in line with the Indian Gaming Equity Act," Vizenor said. "We didn't talk numbers or anything like that."

Vizenor said the White Earth council would respond to Pawlenty within two weeks.