Arizona casino proposal rejected in tribal election

Walter Berry

Friday, May 21, 2004 | 9:02 a.m.

PHOENIX -- Members of the Hopi Tribe rejected a plan Wednesday night to build a casino with up to 500 slot machines in northeastern Arizona to generate needed revenue.

Officials at tribal headquarters in Kykotsmovi said the referendum failed by a 1,051-784 margin. Only 1,835 of the tribe's 8,525 eligible voters went to nine polling places on the 1.5 million-acre reservation, officials said.

In April 1995, 1,700 Hopis went to the polls and voted 986-714 against setting up a tribal gambling enterprise.

Some tribal members said they believe gambling goes against Hopi cultural customs and would add another social ill to a community already plagued by alcoholism and crimes linked to drug abuse.

"Gaming is making money off other people's bad habits and the Hopi way says we should not use other people's bad habits to benefit," tribal Vice Chairman Caleb Johnson said days before the vote.

But other Hopis said gaming money is an economic necessity and would put them on par with tribes that have used the added revenue for improved housing, education, health care and law enforcement.

Arizona currently has 22 casinos operated by 15 tribes.

"Certainly the Hopi Tribe is similar to all other tribes -- they look to generate revenue," Hopi assistant general counsel Niccole Winship said. "This was an opportunity for the tribe to do so. The members' personal choices came out on top."

The ballot measure was put before Hopi voters after a team appointed by the Tribal Council recommended that the tribe build a casino on 200 acres of tribal trust land off the reservation near Winslow.

There were four options on the ballot. Voters could tell the tribe to: ignore the 900 gaming devices allotted to them under a state gaming compact, lease slot machines to another tribe as a source of revenue, build a casino and lease some slots, or build a casino and retain all of their slots.

A casino with 400 to 500 slot machines would provide up to 500 jobs for Hopis and could generate $24 million annually, said tribal spokeswoman Vanessa Charles.

That money would offset losses the tribe expects to suffer from a decline in coal revenue over the next few years.

Hopis would lose $7.7 million -- about 35 percent of their annual operating revenue -- in yearly royalties from coal mined at the Peabody Coal Black Mesa mine if a Nevada power plant that uses the coal shuts down.

There's speculation that the 1,580-megawatt Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin could close at the end of 2005 because of the estimated $1 billion cost of retrofitting it to meet clean-air standards.