Texas tribe pushes on despite casino ruling

Mark Babineck

Thursday, July 18, 2002 | 10:03 a.m.

ALABAMA-COUSHATTA RESERVATION, Texas -- It's 11 a.m., and Clarence Session is headed to his car in the Alabama-Coushatta casino parking lot when a bystander asks if he's leaving.

Session laughed.

"I'm just going to get my checkbook," Session said before proceeding to his Cadillac, with an upfront parking spot backing his claim that he was among the first gamblers to arrive on a recent morning.

Before heading back inside, Session explained why he regularly drives downstate to this tiny casino on the woodsy Polk County reservation in deep East Texas, rather than to the flashier operations in Louisiana.

"I've got a farm up the road and I pay some heavy taxes. I want to keep my money in Texas," Session explained. "If I can do anything to help keep this place open, I will."

That's not likely, considering he doesn't sit on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If that court doesn't stay a federal judge's ruling last month that the casino is illegal, it's lights out by July 25.

Tribe Chairman Kevin Battise, while not revealing any numbers from the casino's nearly eight months of operation, said the tribe should nearly recoup its investment if the gaming hall closes permanently.

The losses to the tribe, he said, would come in the things that cannot happen without casino money.

"We were in the process of earmarking dollars for certain projects," said Battise, who said two of the biggest goals were desperately needed new housing and guaranteed college tuition.

"Education is a big need on our reservation," Battise said. "Only 1 percent (of the approximately 1,000 members) have a four-year degree. Any student who wanted to go to school would be able."

Battise also fears the reservation unemployment rate, more than halved to 18 percent thanks to the 70 tribe members on the staff, will return to the pre-casino 47 percent. And that's not to mention the 300 outsiders who might lose their jobs, which include full benefits, he said.

But the legal prospects appear dim.

The Alabama-Coushatta were the last of Texas' three federal reservations to open a casino, joining the Kickapoos, near Eagle Pass, and the Tiguas in El Paso.

An El Paso federal judge ordered the Tiguas, who were reorganized as a federally recognized tribe under the same 1987 Restoration Act as the Alabama-Coushatta, to shutter their casino last autumn. The tribe won a stay from the 5th Circuit, but ultimately closed it Feb. 11.

Because many of the legal issues are similar to those of the Tiguas, the Alabama-Coushatta worry whether they'll even win a stay. In both cases, Texas Attorney General John Cornyn sought to close the casinos.

The tribes contend they were coerced into signing the Restoration Act, which bars any gambling not legal in the state. They also say the state's loosely written lottery statute allows them to open casinos.

Cornyn, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has been firm in his two winning cases.

"The law clearly prohibits the operation of a commercial, for-profit, Las Vegas-style casino in Texas," Cornyn has said.

While the Alabama-Coushatta Entertainment Center offers blackjack, poker and slot machines, the games are about all it has in common with Vegas, or even the more modest riverboats across the Louisiana border.

Though only about 90 miles from downtown Houston, the casino is accessible only from a two-lane stretch of U.S. Highway 190 about 18 miles east of Livingston. Less than a mile down a tribal road sits a wood-sided frame building that housed a gift shop until the casino came in.

Inside are a few rows of slot machines and one pit of five blackjack tables on a poker table, with some high-roller tables tucked in back. The gift shop has been reduced to a cubby hole, over which a sign advertises "Traditional Pineneedle Baskets."

"I think the main gift they sell in there is cigarettes," Battise said, laughing.

There's coffee and soft drinks, but no restaurant or liquor. A large outdoor tent next door offers discount meals on certain nights.

Battise said the slot payouts are industry-standard, including 96 percent on $1 machines. Blackjack works differently, requiring a 50-cent ante with each bet between $5 and $99, with antes rising with the stakes.

The tribe says the blackjack, which includes special payouts such as $25 for back-to-back blackjacks and $100 for a hand of 21 comprised of three 7's of the same suit, is designed to be break-even, with the house profiting strictly on the antes.

"If the players have a bad run of luck and the house gets way ahead, that's when we do the giveaways," Battise said, referring to weekly raffles this month. The last, a pickup giveaway, is scheduled right as the casino could be closing.

If the tribe's luck improves in the courts, or if the Legislature changes gambling law, Battise acknowledges the tribe could build a much larger operation on Alabama-Coushatta land on U.S. Highway 59 near Moscow, which would bring gambling even closer to Houston residents.

But dreams of bright lights on what someday will be Interstate 69 seem far away as closure looms.

"I stay awake at nights thinking about what's going to happen," Battise said. "It's for our people that I'm fighting so hard."

The chairman is more restrained than others at the casino, including John Mitchell, who drives a modified golf cart to shuttle patrons to their cars if needed. It's one of the few jobs the 62-year-old says his back problems will allow him to perform.

Mitchell believes the state only is interested in keeping the tribe humbled, a charge officials deny.

"I can't see how the state can understand that it's better off putting them out of work and putting them on welfare," Mitchell said.