|
|---|
Obama administration moves the Indian Affairs bureau out of the attic with choice of new head Photo courtesy Tami A. Heilemann/Department of Interior 7/3/09 - The new head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was sworn in on June 26th, an event that didn't exactly break into the headline news. Larry Echohawk plans to address issues related to a Carieri fix, which he strongly favors and allowing tribes to have class 3 gaming on reservation casinos, an issue he advocated for in the 1990's. It seems to me that with the appointment of a highly qualified director, President Obama has signaled that it wants the BIA to become a bureau that more than the dusty chest of drawers in the administration's attic as it has been for many years. For more, read the article in Indian Country Today. Now that the casino is making the news again, I'm cross posting between Casino-Friend.com and Heckuva.blogspot.com because here readers can easily comment on the later site. There's no comment section on Casino-Friend although readers have always been welcome to write letters and OpEds. Readers are welcome to comment on this commentary there. In the Gazette: From realistic sublime to wishful thinking ridiculous
7/2/09 Run, don't walk, to buy this week's Middleboro Gazette if you want to read two smart people come to opposite conclusions and offer opposite recommendations to the town on opposite sides of the opinion section of the newspaper. On the sublime side is editor Jane Lopes who explains in detail using good logic why using the annual $250,000 payment by, as she put it in her title, "behaving as if the casino will come is a reasonable choice". Sensible. Sublime compared to what comes next. Mark Belanger , in his "Bumpkin's Corner" column, is so convinced that the casino won't come to Middleboro that he advises that the town should stop spending the money now. He wants us to "save the money and start investigating what we need to do to get this money available for other purposes once somebody official calls time of death on patient casino". In other words, he wants the town to figure out a way to break the agreement which stipulates that we will use the money for preplanning. He also wants the town to recover the land. How, you might ask? He wants the land "gifted to us in exchange for all the effort, pain, and disruption this five-star resort has caused". Back to his suggestion that we break our agreement to use the money for preplanning, he suggests we consider using the money to buy the land back. So go buy The Gazette to read the Lopes' reasonable sublime and Belanger's wishful thinking ridiculous (with a touch of reneging on a contract). Rick McNair offers his take on what he calls the "dueling Gazette casino opinions" on his blog here. You can comment on this article on Heckuva.blogspot.com
Middeboro reviews annual $250,000 wired from casino investors7/1/09 Middleboro recieved its $250,000 from the casino investors yesterday. The recommendation of Town Planner Ruth Geoffrey is that this should be used for the following:
According to The Enterprise, "town officials" are asking for a written guarentee that they won't "have to" return any of the funds and "selectmen were advised by the Resort Advisory Committee to get it in writing." if the casino isn't built. My own opinion is that this is much ado about very little and has more to do with town politics than any real need to "get it in writing" to assure that the investors / tribe won't initiate action to have the money returned. I presume this would be through the dispute resolution process in laid out in the IGA. I suspect that the investors are scratching their heads wondering what's going on in Middleboro that we would be reading something into the Intergovernment Agreement which only says:
Regardess of whether we actually need such written protection, I think since it is such a simple matter to obtain, and the investors / tribe seemingly have no objection, we might as well get it. Even more "news" which (again) is no news6/29/09 If you haven't already read today's Cape Cod Times article about the casino you might as well although there's nothing new. The same old quotable quoters are being interviewed. I'm no longer considered quote-worthy since the reporters have given up quoting me even after they talk to me at BOS meetings. Perhaps my giving them nothing more than a shrug has something to do with it. More likely as far as they're concerned, I'm irrelevant. Wayne Perkins at least gives them odds, though 50/50 pretty much equals my shrug. Adam Bond can be counted on for a colorful line or two. In this case he gives a cliche regarding his opinion of the board: "The whole ability for them to make lemonade out of this lemon is gone," while Mark Belanger weighs in with "our board of selectmen has botched this project at every possible opportunity and just simply continues to do so.". When some news is no news6/26/09 There are snippets of real news in today's Brockton Enterprise article "Questions linger in Middleboro over casino: Some in town believe casino will never be built", primarily old news that a vote was "taken by the tribal council not to reaffirm the Mashpee Wampanoag’s development deal with investors". If there's any significant new news it's that the investors are saying that the deal is still in place and that "nothing has changed". Much of the article deals with Selectman Steven McKinnon's insisting that the town needs to have a formal agreement with the tribe that they won't try to get the town to return any of the money it already paid them for pre-casino projects. Adam Bond, a former selectman, has been pushing for this on his blog and his radio show, Coffee Shop Talk. His treatise is, to quote him "if it ain't in writing, it don't exist". In his most recent blog entry "Never in my wildest dreams", Bond takes a fellow former selectman to task: "The level of ignorance of the IGA displayed by Mr. Perkins is indisputable in my opinion, since he apparently has not actually read and understood the deal in which he inaccurately claims to have been a chief negotiator." I'm not certain whether Perkins made this claim or whether The Enterprise may have misreported this. To me this is all made up news. At least Bond takes note of a fact I brought up in my own personal blog (excuse the tile - Brownie, you're doing a heckuva a job - which I selected before I ever thought it would get political). I reminded readers that the tribe could not simply ask, or even demand, that the town return the money already given. They would have to take legal action. Bond finally point this out, albeit with an ad hominem jab at Wayne Perkins:
I'd ask the odds makers familiar with civil litigation what they think the odds are of the tribe actually suing to get the money already paid to the town of Middleboro back. Who exactly would initiate such legal action, the tribe or the investors? I'm curious what experts think the chances of the tribe and/or investors winning such a suit are. If they are slim I'd ask why they would risk losing money. In the "everybody is an odds maker department" resident Robert Dunphy garnered six sentences in the article. He gave low odds that the casino will ever be built. Finally, the spectre of Glenn Marshall was raised as it often is by those who are against the casino, this time by Steve McKinnon:
Looking back: An eight minute video of residents expressing pro and con opinions before the 2007 controversal meeting at the high schoolIt will probably take about 30 seconds to fully open this page.
New developments impact odds on Middleboro casino: Part 2How will the Twin Rivers fiscal troubles effect the Middleboro casino?6/22/09 The answer to the above question is "I don't know." However anyone trying to analyze the many factors which effect the future of the Mashpee casino has to consider the finances of the investors. The Providence Journal this morning tells us that the Rhode Island "Twin River’s lenders, and legal counsel had recommended they “delay” the bankruptcy court filing, at least for now." Sol Kerzner and Len Wolman are investors in Twin Rivers and the backers of the Mashpee. We can only speculate what Wolman and Kerzner plan to do, though it makes sense that 1) they want to make a lot of money and 2) unless they had cash stuff in their matresses they were hit like everyone else with investments by the crash in the stock market. We also know that they didn't become multi-millionaires by making a lot of mistakes. The new leadership of the Mashpee Wampanoag are trying to negotiate a much better deal with Kerzner and Wolman than the one signed when Glenn Marshall was chairman. Looking back to Octover, 2007 through the eyes of Boston Globe reporter Sean Murphy ( see article ) you can see the kind of field the tribe was and is playing on. Now, between the Bureau of Indian Affairs land into trust decision, Congress working of a Carieri fix, the state yet to decide on class three gambling, the investors own fiscal situation, and the tribe attempting to work out a better deal, there are simply too many unkowns to predict an outcome. What can be said is that at least half of the Middleboro residents, and probably more as mild cons turn to reluctant pros due to the local budget shortfall, want to see the casino come here. Of course most of the tribe does. Both groups are highly motivated, but limited in what they can do to effect this outcome. We also know that because of the state's own budget problems there is pressure for them to approve class three gambling and get the revenue from taxing commercial casinos and from a compact with the tribe for a Middleboro casino. New developments impact odds on Middleboro casino: Part 1Above: You read her articles, now see Cape Cod Times reporter Stephanie Voss interviewed 6/16/09 Updated 2PM The Cape Cod Times (link) report sheds light on the internal workings of the deal making between the investors and Glenn Marshall, and what has been happening with the investors under the current tribal leadership of Cedric Cromwell. Reading the article I can't help but see this as yet one more obstacle for the tribe to overcome before we ever see a casino in Middleboro. The investors saw an opportunity to front a great deal of money on a project that they hoped would bring them high returns. During the casino debate prior to Town Meeting Mark Bellanger insisted we weren't getting enough money, and came to the microphone at the meeting itself and pegged the fair return to the town at about $21 million. In Middleboro few if any others believed we could get a better deal. Now Bellanger is getting to say "I told you so" (link). (I thought) Adam Bond became a very late convert to Bellanger's way of thinking. He quit the Board of Selectmen over his belief that they could force the tribe to renegotiate from a position of weakness when they had no elected leaders. Mark Bellanger emailed me a different observation:
Now we learn that there are those in the tribe who feel that they were treated just as unfairly by the investors as some Middleboro residents felt we were treated by the tribe. In fact, both are correct about unfair treatment, except we weren't treated unfairly by the tribe. We got the fallout from how they were treated by the investors. The tribe seems to have based their conception of what was fair for us on what they accepted from the investors. Now what we know, as of today, that had Bond prevailed and the BOS forced a premature meeting with the tribe it would have amounted to naught. Only now is the tribe trying to renogotiate a better deal from the tribe:
Before Middleboro gets any more money from the tribe the tribe has to renegotiate to get more money from the investors.
Senate Indian Affairs Subcommittee Hearing on “Land into trust ” authority from May 21, 2009 - can be viewed online here
Quote: "I don't think this committee will do nothing. I don't think this Congress will do nothing." Senator Byron Dorgan 5/22/09 The Cape Cod Times has a summary here. 05.20.2009 Chairman Byron Dorgan (D-ND) announced Wednesday the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs conduct a hearing Thursday, May 21 at 2:15 PM to examine the Executive Branch’s authority to take lands into trust for Indian tribes in light of the recent Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v Salazar. In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Secretary of Interior was not authorized to acquire lands in trust status for an Indian tribe acknowledged by the federal government after 1934. The committee will seek to determine the effect of the ruling on Indian tribes and what, if any, action by Congress might be required. Details follow (links courtesy of Casino Friend): WHO: U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Senator Byron Dorgan, Chairman; Vice Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY); and other members of the committee. WITNESSES: Edward P. Lazarus, Partner, Akin Gump Struass Hauer and Feld, LLP. Mr. Lazaurus is co-head of Akin Gump’s litigation practice, specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation; W. Ron Allen, Secretary, National Congress of American Indians; Lawrence Long, Chair, Conference of Western Attorneys General.
Photo essay: The tribe, the town and the BOS
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell addresses the Middleoro Board of Selectment as an overflow audience listens. Pictured in the cropped section below are several casino opponents including Allin Frawley, Mike Solimoni, Rich Young, Mary Tufts, Kim Shea and Judy Gibbs. Photo by contributer. 
Before most of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal officers, chief, council and several members arrived, Chairman Cedric Cromwell greeted and chatted with town residents After Cromwell addressed the board and answered their questions, it was time for the board to formally be introduced to members of the tribal council.
Tribe treasurer Mark Harding on left, new BOS member Steve McKinnon on right.
Board member McKinnon, a casino opponent, appeared to be less than enthusiastic in welcoming the tribe.
Below: Yvonne Frye Avant, a tribal council member, chats with Willy Duphilly.
Clink thumbnails to enlarge. More photos here
|
| |
It's real. It's serious. But because Middleboro almost certain to host a resort that is also a major casino, we should learn the basics about this psychiatric disorder.
