The five southern California tribes currently seeking permission to vastly expand their gambling empires have spent millions of dollars on California politics and elections to achieve their goal. By now, every Californian has seen the flapping eagle that was a component of Morongo’s planned $20 million TV campaign to win expansion approval. Some might also remember “Team 2006”, the $10 million independent expenditure committee funded by the tribes last fall to extract political retribution when the tribes’ expansion agreements stalled in the Assembly.
This combination of brute financial intimidation and dupe-the-public ad campaign has brought these gaming tribes to the threshold of their objective: permission to triple the number of slots in their casinos. Not-so-quiet whispers in the corridors of the Capitol suggest that the Legislature is about to cave into the tribes, demonstrating yet again the power of the dollar in Sacramento.
But even as these tribes have spent tens of millions of dollars to impact California law, they have sought in the state’s courts to exempt themselves from California laws regulating election and political spending. (Apparently, this is how much audacity a $10 million political warchest will buy you.) This self-serving exceptionalism – “the law applies to you, but not to us” – could be stopped in its tracks if the Governor and Legislature demanded that any gaming compacts between the tribes and the state included agreement by the tribes to abide by the laws protecting California’s political process.
Now, one of the five tribes with an expansion proposal, the Agua Caliente of Palm Springs—the same tribe deeply involved in the Abramoff bribery scandal, has quietly positioned itself to continue arguing its privileged status in front of the US Supreme Court, a petition now scheduled for July 28, AFTER it gains its permission for a huge gambling expansion in Sacramento.
A little background: in October 2002, the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission brought action against the Agua Caliente Tribe alleging dozens of violations of California’s Political Reform Act. (Second Amended Complaint for Civil Penalties and Injunctive Relief Under the Political Reform Act of 1974, as Amended) Basically, the FPPC alleged that Agua Caliente made contributions of at least $7.5 million to statewide ballot initiatives and nearly every candidate in the state except for Inyo County dogcatcher, but without disclosing them as required by law.
At the time, the amount of spending by Agua Caliente and whether they intended to report it even worried its lobbyist, now-convicted felon, Michael Scanlon. In an email to Jack Abramoff, Scanlon wrote how the Tribe’s simmering dispute with the FPPC was irritating politicians, but not for the reasons one might expect:
“The campaign finance issue is pissing off people big time in Sacramento. Essentially the tribe is refusing to release their contribution data (to whom they gave and how much). This issue is now in court. The AC says they are sovereign, and therefore do not have to disclose.“If the tribe wins-guess what-Every penny they contributed would have to be returned – as under California law candidates cannot take contributions from foreign countries.
“We are running into [t]his everywhere we turn. The funny thing is-the only thing the pols really care about is giving the money back-not so much the issue itself. At some point we may have to recommend dropping the suit if they want to be successful.”
Last December, the California Supreme Court affirmed the FPPC’s right to enforce California’s election and lobbying laws against the defendant tribe. And recently, after the CA Supreme Court denied a rehearing, Agua asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a 60-day extension of time to file an appeal. (Scott Hallabrin, General Counsel and Lawrence T. Woodlock, Senior Commission Counsel, Fair Political Practices Commission memorandum on Pending Litigation to Chairman Johnson and Commissioners Hodson, Huguenin, Leidigh, and Remy. May 30, 2007)
Back to the present: The compacts currently under discussion present a golden opportunity for the Governor and Legislature, in an exchange for billions of dollars worth of casino expansions, to contractually bind the gaming tribes to abide by California’s political laws, thus ensuring that the law applies equally to us all regardless of any future court decisions. The pending casino expansion legislation offers perhaps the best opportunity for an agreement, one Californians and our elected officials cannot afford to miss.
Ned Wigglesworth, joined Common Cause as a policy advocate earlier this year, after working as a corporate lawyer, bartender and creative writer. From these experiences and his time spent growing up on a sheep farm in Kansas, Ned brings a common-sense populist perspective to the problem of big money in politics.
