Deval Patrick not eager to talk to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe

Mashpee seek to curb state role over casino plan

By Scott Van Voorhis
Monday, August 11, 2008

The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which wants to build a $1 billion casino resort, may be in for a long wait before it gets a chance to sit down at the negotiating table with Gov. Deval Patrick.

The Patrick administration is taking a more skeptical stance toward the idea of making an early deal with the tribe - before it wins permission from the federal government for an official reservation on which to build a gambling complex.

“Should the tribe ask to commence negotiations prior to having lands in trust, the administration will weigh a number of issues in determining a response to that request,” said Kofi Jones, a spokeswoman for the executive office of housing and economic development.

The response comes after remarks made by Patrick in June in which he appeared ready to sit down with the tribe at the negotiating table.

“We are prepared to negotiate under the parameters that exist within current law,” Patrick told WBZ-TV. “Some form of expanded gaming is coming, because the tribe has some tribal rights and we want to be ahead of it.”

While Patrick quickly downplayed the remarks, the comments, combined with reports that the tribe was also ready to talk, had some industry observers predicting the launch of compact talks by year’s end, if not before.

Meanwhile, the Patrick administration’s new coolness toward early negotiations could have consequences for the tribe.

For starters, the tribe may now have to wait years before it gets a chance to formally negotiate a casino deal with the governor.

Despite winning federal recognition as a tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoags are now in the midst of a lengthy review by the U.S. Department of the Interior over their application to take land into trust in the southeastern Massachusetts town of Middleboro. If approved, that would give the tribe an official reservation on which to build a casino.

But such requests sometimes take years to review, with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe - even under a best-case scenario - not likely to get an answer until at least the spring.

The upcoming presidential election could also have a major impact on the tribe’s chances of getting a speedy approval, or any approval at all. Sen. John McCain, the Republican standard-bearer, has been a longtime critic of Indian casinos.

The tribe, backed by some of the world’s top gambling investors, has so far created a sense of inevitability about its casino plans. Early compact talks would only strengthen the tribe’s hand in that regard.

And direct negotiations with the governor could help smooth the tribe’s land-in-trust application in Washington, D.C. Federal officials, as they weigh the tribe’s request, will also be looking closely at how the proposal is being viewed by state officials.

“It makes it easier to appeal to the federal government,” said the Rev. Richard McGowan, a gambling industry expert and a professor at Boston College. “I don’t think the federal government likes to do this and have a huge fight with the state.”

But the Patrick administration has its own casino plans.

A new administration-commissioned report on the potential gambling market in Massachusetts, written by New Jersey-based Spectrum Gaming, offers what could be the rough draft of those plans.

The report recommends the tribe’s casino be included in any future plan for expanded gambling, but as one of three major commercial casinos.

The tribe’s casino should play by all the same tax and regulatory rules the other casinos are subject to, the report said.

That stands in contrast to the model used by Connecticut’s two giant and semi-autonomous Indian casinos, which the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe has indicated it hopes to emulate. Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun both pay 25 percent of their slot revenues to the state, but both casinos are immune from a myriad of state and local taxes and regulations.

Jones, the spokeswoman for the Patrick administration’s main development arm, said the administration would consult the recommendations made in the Spectrum report.

By holding off on talks, the governor can pressure the tribe to agree to operate their casino under a commercial license, subject to state taxes and regulations.

“It keeps the pressure on them to go the commercial route,” said Clyde Barrow, a professor and gambling industry expert at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

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