Thursday, April 2, 2009

Indian Casinos Win Round to Make Charities Suffer

Congratulations to CA Senator Gil Cedillo in being successful at weakening California's charitable organizations efforts to raise money. This allows tribes to gain more financially, at the same time they eliminate their members. This means fewer people win! Great job GIL!

Charity bingo operators in Sacramento lost a major round in court last week when a three-judge panel overturned a lower court injunction that would have allowed them to stay in business.
While the case concerns operations in the Sacramento area, it has statewide implications. Several large gaming tribes have claimed that these operations violate the law and that by allowing them, the state was not living up to the gaming compacts signed with tribes.

A year ago, the United Auburn Indian Tribe, which operates the large Thunder Valley Casino near Sacramento, sent a complaint letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and attorney general Jerry Brown threatening to withhold payments to the state called for in their gaming compact if the bingo operations continued.

Under California law and the provisions of the gaming compacts, California charities are allowed a type of gaming known as “remote caller bingo.” Numerous charities in the greater Sacramento area have been operating machines they say fit that description because they pitted multiple players in a bingo game against each other, without a “single player” option. The tribes argued that the machines were essentially slot machines or video poker machines in terms of their user experience.

CAPITOL WEEKLY

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is there any way to see how much the tribes have contributed to this Gil?...as a latino, you would think he should know about being treated unfairly, yet he backs the tribes bad behavior....its time for California to nullify these compacts...Arnold signed them...not the general public..