n The Scotts Valley casino is proposed for 30 acres of unincorporated, industrial and privately owned property at Parr Boulevard on the Richmond Parkway. Guidiville sought to build on the former 422-acre Point Molate Navy Fuel Depot site, which is city-owned land within city limits along the shoreline.
n Unlike Guidiville, the Scotts Valley project needs no local approvals and in 2006 secured a $330 million municipal services agreement with Richmond for water, roads and other services.
n Scotts Valley wants to build a 2,000-slot casino — the size of typical large Nevada casinos — while Guidiville sought approval for two hotels and a 122,000-square-foot conference center in addition to gambling.
Whether the differences in scope, size and location will help the Scotts Valley tribe overcome significant anti-gaming political sentiment is an open question.
The Lytton Band in San Pablo, the only tribe with gambling in the Bay Area, withdrew its expansion plans five years ago after it became clear that the Legislature would not approve the compact it had negotiated with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Contra Costa County has no legal jurisdiction over an Indian casino built on tribal land. However, it has invested considerable time and money opposing federal approval on the grounds that it would, among other things, foment costly social problems such as smoking, gambling and alcohol addictions.
The county also hired a Lewis and Clark College historian who wrote a controversial study disputing Scotts Valley’s ancestral ties to Contra Costa, a key factor in winning federal approval.
The tribes have a far more formidable foe in U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who sits on a powerful appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Indian Gaming Commission.
Feinstein introduced legislation in April that would substantially tighten the rules under which tribes may obtain the federal Indian lands designation necessary to place new property intended for tribal casinos under sovereign Native American control.
She vigorously opposes what she characterizes as “reservation shopping,” or an unholy alliance between wealth-seeking investors and Indian tribes.
The senator says the bill will end the practice by requiring a demonstration of substantial and direct aboriginal and modern connections between the tribe and the land where it seeks to build a casino. The existing standard permits the Department of the Interior far more room for interpretation.
About 17 California tribes have Indian lands designation applications pending with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, including the Scotts Valley and Guidiville.
The two East Bay tribes were told privately last year that the bureau — led by appointees of President Barack Obama — intended to approve their requests.
However, the bureau remains officially silent on the matter, as the administration reportedly navigates the delicate politics between anti-gaming forces and Native American tribes who view casinos as a way out of crushing poverty.
Scotts Valley leaders now worry that Feinstein’s opposition, coupled with Obama’s imminent re-election campaign and fears of inciting a political wedge issue, will drive the decision even deeper into the federal bureaucracy.
“We’re in limbo,” said Scotts Valley Chairman Donald Arnold.
With or without Feinstein’s legislation, Arnold rejects the characterization of his tribe as an opportunistic, reservation shopper with no legitimate ties to Contra Costa.
Arnold’s band of 233 people — nearly half are children — is among four landless tribes restored to federal recognition after a successful 1992 court battle.
According to tribal history, its aboriginal ancestors were among nomadic groups that occupied portions of the Bay Area until the 19th century, when settlers forced them off their territorial grounds, decimated their populations with disease and threatened them with enslavement.
The band traces its more recent roots to 1911, when the federal government relocated a mixed group of Indians from throughout Northern California — including those who spoke one or more of seven Pomo dialects — onto 57 acres in Lake County that became known as the Scotts Valley Rancheria.
Nine out of 10 Scotts Valley tribal members are direct descendants of Mary and Fernando Frese, a Native American couple born in southern Napa County in 1845 who were among the amalgamation of original rancheria residents, according to tribal documents.
The tribe lost its federal tribal status in 1965, and the government gave individual members parcels of the original rancheria property. But with few jobs and little income, they were unable to pay the real estate taxes or repay loans taken against the land, and it was all sold.
Arnold’s family, along with many of their tribal counterparts, eventually moved to the Bay Area. He graduated from high school in San Francisco and lives in Hayward.
Today, the tribe’s official service area includes Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma and Contra Costa counties, and it has offices in Lakeport, Concord and Richmond. About half its members live in Lake County, while the balance reside in the East Bay.
Like many tribes, Scotts Valley leaders view gaming as a proven path to prosperity.
As of October, nearly two-thirds of its members were unemployed. Three-quarters qualify as low income under federal guidelines. A third live below the federal poverty line.
A lucrative casino deal is the only business model where a landless, poor tribe can attract deep-pocket investors willing to gamble on a lengthy and uncertain government approval process, tribal leaders Arnold and Ray said.
The tribe voted in 2002 to pursue a casino, selected the North Richmond site among more than a dozen contenders and, in 2004, signed a joint venture deal with Florida-based investor Alan Ginsberg.
The tribe and Ginsberg in June inked a casino management contract with Seminole Tribe of Florida, which awaits National Indian Gaming Commission approval.
If the Scotts Valley tribe is successful at the federal level, it also must successfully negotiate a compact with California’s governor and Legislature in order to operate Las Vegas-style slot machines, also called Class II gaming devices.
Contact Lisa Vorderbrueggen
at 925-945-4773 or IBABuzz.com/politics. Follow her at Twitter.com/lvorderbrueggen.
