Davis vetoes bills allowing blackjack at card rooms, casino off-ramp

Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2000 | 10:38 a.m.

SUN WIRE SERVICES

SACRAMENTO -- A bill allowing California card parlors to offer blackjack was vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis.

Davis said Tuesday it would take a constitutional amendment approved by voters, not simply a change in law, to allow the Nevada-style game.

The bill, by Assemblyman Dick Floyd, D-Harbor City, passed the Legislature in the hectic final days of the 2000 session.

Opponents complained many lawmakers did not know what they were voting for when Floyd called the bill for a final vote in the Assembly.

The objective of blackjack, which has been banned in California card parlors since 1885, is to get just enough cards to add up to 21. Face cards count as 10 points.

In an effort to skirt the ban, some parlors have been offering similar games in which players try to get cards that add up to 20 or 22.

Supporters say Floyd's bill would let California's 125 card parlors compete with tribal casinos, whose compacts with the state allow them to have blackjack games.

Separately, Davis vetoed a bill that would have allowed the Miwok Indian tribe to construct a Highway 50 off-ramp with its own money.

Davis said while the idea "may have merit, I believe it is imperative that the greater community be given the opportunity to participate in the issues surrounding the proposed highway improvements."

The Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians said the off-ramp was necessary for development of its $100 million hotel-casino project, which is being backed by East Coast investors. The casino is allowed under the state's legal compact with California Indian tribes that now allows Nevada-style gambling on Indian lands.

The tribe's plan was to build the complex north of Highway 50 on its reservation lands near Shingle Springs, but its property has been virtually cut off from traffic since the mid-1960s, when Highway 50 was constructed.

There is a private road leading to the reservation, but it goes through a housing development.

The tribe opened a small casino in 1997, but residents of the development sued to stop it. The casino was closed when a judge ruled that its customers could not use the private residential street that provided the only access to the site.

The tribe then announced plans to purchase 118 acres south of the freeway, but again ran into local opposition. Earlier this month, it revised plans again, announcing it would build on its original site and hoped to construct a $3.7-million on-off ramp and overpass, at its own expense.

In a letter to Davis last month, legislators called on him to support the idea, saying the tribe had been treated unfairly 40 years ago when Highway 50 was built without an off-ramp to its property.

Opponents, including several groups of homeowners in the area, said the complex threatened the rural nature of the area.

Sen. Tim Leslie, R-Tahoe City, whose district includes the reservation property, argued against passage of the bill.

"I have no quarrel with the tribe that's trying to do this," he said during the Senate debate on the measure. "But the situation remains that this casino is in the wrong place. This is a rural community."