Sides at odds over S.F. Bay Area casino

Erica Werner

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 | 9:23 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Two influential San Francisco Bay Area Democrats squared off at a Senate committee hearing Tuesday over whether an Indian tribe should be allowed to build a Nevada-style casino in an urban area near the bay.

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, defended a provision he included in a 2000 spending bill taking land into trust for the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians so it could build a casino in San Pablo, across the bay from San Francisco.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing that Miller let the tribe circumvent the normal process for getting a casino away from traditional reservation land.

She urged support for a bill she's introduced that would revoke the special trust status Miller got for the tribe's land and require the Lyttons to go through the normal approval process, which can take years.

"The legislation that I have introduced would simply return the Lytton tribe to the same status as all other tribes seeking to game on newly acquired lands," Feinstein said in written testimony. "This bill is not about preventing the Lytton from opening a casino."

But Miller said the tribe needed his help because its land was seized by the federal government in the 1960s, and even when its federal recognition was restored it was blocked from building a casino on ancestral lands.

"Using the power of Congress to take punitive action against the Lytton Band is neither justified nor appropriate," Miller's testimony said.

A top official at the Interior Department, which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the department does not object to Feinstein's bill. The department believes it's not appropriate to act on behalf of one tribe to waive the normal legal steps for getting an off-reservation casino, said George Skibine, acting deputy assistant secretary of policy and economic development for Indian affairs.

The tribe's initial agreement with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for transforming its San Pablo cardroom into a massive casino with 5,000 slot machines.

But amid opposition the tribe scaled back its proposal to 2,500 slots, and last month it announced plans to shelve Nevada-style gaming altogether and focus on electronic bingo and games that don't require state approval.

The tribe's Nevada-style casino plans had even drawn opposition from Miller, who said he never envisioned such a big operation when he agreed to help out the tribe. However, the tribe left open the option of reviving its slot machine plan in the future.

Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., hasn't taken a position on Feinstein's bill and limited his opening statement to repeating concerns about how the Lyttons got the right to open a casino.

"The question before us now, however, is what to do about it," his prepared remarks said.