Casinos: Nothing's forever
By RESLER
Saturday, February 22, 2003
Gov. Jim Doyle says renegotiating compacts with Wisconsin's Indian tribes reflects the reality that the casinos are legal, popular and obviously here to stay.
He's absolutely right, of course, and he was smart to try to tap into casino coffers to help balance the state budget. But there are other issues tied to this debate over expanded casino gambling in Wisconsin. And prominent among them is the unsettling disclosure in Friday's Journal Sentinel that more than $700,000 of soft money from Wisconsin tribes was funneled to the Democratic National Committee, then rerouted to state Democratic coffers just days before the November election. That kind of generous campaign giving does not mean that Doyle's policy to allow the tribes to expand their casino operations was a quid pro quo. But Doyle, the former attorney general, surely understands how the timing would raise eyebrows.
Doyle also shouldn't be surprised that both houses of the Legislature moved quickly Friday to establish legislative oversight over new Indian compacts his administration is now negotiating in secret.
Legislative oversight is a concept that Doyle himself embraced in the past. And considering the scale and the scope of Indian gambling in Wisconsin, it's a bit disingenuous for him to argue now that legislators should not have that oversight.
We believe they should. With conditions. They should not get involved in the actual negotiating; that should be left to the administration. Nor should lawmakers use their oversight to undermine the legitimate interests and court-sanctioned rights of the tribes to operate casinos. But legislative oversight is good public policy and particularly prudent in this case.
The debate was touched off this week after an announcement by the Oneida tribe that it had tentatively negotiated a new compact with the state that would permit the largest expansion of Indian gambling so far. While the announcement caught everyone off guard, the devil was in the details for legislators, particularly Republicans. In return for giving the state millions more in revenue, the Oneida could add more games, such as craps and roulette, and increase betting limits. These measures troubled many legislators because they would mean a significant expansion of gambling. Even worse, according to legislators such as Sen. Bob Welch (R-Redgranite) and Assembly Speaker John Gard (R-Peshtigo), is the perpetual nature of the compact.
Marc Marotta, Doyle's administration secretary, who negotiated the Oneida compact, argues that perpetuity does not mean the compact is sealed off from renegotiation forever. But the term itself has a permanence to it that seems unnecessarily absolute in these fast- changing times. As Gard says, what does perpetual mean if not forever? Marotta and tribal representatives say the current five- year compacts were impractically short and interfered with the tribes' ability to obtain long-term financing for necessary capital investments. Good point. But it seems to us this concern could be easily addressed by making the compacts longer -- 10 years, 15 years or perhaps even 20.
Even 30 years is a long way from forever.
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