Opinion: California leaders allow gaming monopoly, tribal inequity by legislating for the rich few • The Mendocino Voice

This opinion piece is a part of a partnership between the Mendocino Voice and nonprofit newsroom CalMatters to carry related nonpartisan information to Mendocino County readers. Learn extra about CalMatters here.

A stacked deck doesn’t simply tilt the chances, it erases equity. When the highly effective and rich dictate the phrases, smaller voices are silenced and alternative is denied. 

Recently my tribe, the Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation, obtained a devastating blow when the California Legislature handed Assembly Bill 831. The measure would ban companies — and tribes that don’t personal casinos — from providing on-line sweepstakes video games in California. 

Wealthy, mega-casino tribes used their influence to push this laws, which locks rural and fewer advantaged tribes out of digital income alternatives — the one area the place much less economically advantaged tribal nations may compete with them on a extra equal footing and start assembly the essential wants of our individuals. 

To perceive why we oppose this invoice you’ll want to perceive who we’re. 

Kletsel Dehe is a small Wintun tribe of 295 residents in Colusa County, about 70 miles north of Sacramento. Like many rural tribes, we face persistent boundaries to financial alternative: Jobs are scarce, infrastructure is proscribed and isolation entrenches poverty. 

More than 20 years in the past, California voters authorised Propositions 5 and 1A, legalizing tribal gaming. Those efforts succeeded as a result of all tribes stood collectively. Voters believed they had been creating alternative and self-sufficiency for each tribal group. Without that unity, there could be no mega-casinos in California. 

But over time, that promise fractured. A handful of tribes with prime areas grew to become extremely rich, with billion-dollar casinos, resorts and assets to resolve infrastructure wants. These tribes renegotiated compacts, blew previous the unique 2,000-machine restrict and a few even expanded into Las Vegas. 

Meanwhile, dozens of different tribes opened smaller casinos in much less worthwhile areas, conserving their governments afloat however producing solely modest income.  

And non-gaming tribes like mine, with out prime on line casino areas, had been locked right into a flat $1.1 million annual stipend from the income sharing belief fund. The quantity hasn’t modified in 25 years, although inflation has cut its real value in half.  

When rich tribes argue for legal guidelines like AB 831, they often invoke “tribal struggles” — as if all tribes share the identical actuality. Many tribes resolved these challenges years in the past, whereas rural and small-market tribes proceed to face them every single day. 

We don’t begrudge their success. But it’s unfair and hypocritical for these well-off tribes to now argue that our partnerships with social gaming corporations threaten sovereignty. 

Their personal casinos had been constructed with outdoors distributors, Wall Street financing and non-tribal administration contracts. To deny smaller tribes the identical instruments shouldn’t be about sovereignty. It’s about monopoly. 

Other states have discovered extra equitable paths. In Washington, for instance, tribes can lease unused gaming machine rights to one another. This ensures that each tribe, gaming or not, has an actual stake within the trade.  

California took the alternative method, a frozen stipend for the various, and limitless enlargement for the few. AB 831 extends that inequity into the digital period, slicing off innovation earlier than it could start. 

To be clear, the wealthiest tribes are already getting ready for digital gaming. They’re constructing social gaming platforms so when iGaming is legalized, they may dominate as soon as once more. 

The remainder of us might be left outdoors, nonetheless ready for significant entry to the alternatives voters thought they gave all tribes 25 years in the past. 

Politics usually comes right down to how deep your pockets are. But much less rich tribes like mine are performed being instructed to remain quiet whereas alternative passes us by.  

The braveness to problem a stacked deck, even when the chances are in opposition to you, modifications techniques and forces equity again into the foundations.  

California gaming was constructed on unity. AB 831 betrays that legacy. 

Charlie Wright is chairman of the Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation.

This article first appeared at CalMatters here.

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