"A steady downpour didn’t keep Indian gambling workers from flocking outside the state Capitol in St. Paul last April. At least 1,500 people gathered outside on the building’s steps, some arriving by the busload from reservations hours away. Clad in raincoats and shielded by a canopy of umbrellas, workers thrust signs into the air that read, “Rural jobs count too” and “Don’t gamble with my job!” They were pushing back at a slew of perennial bills in the legislative queue that would install slot machines at racetracks — better known as a racino — or allow electronic gambling in bars and restaurants.

The legislation represented an effort to break the Indian gambling monopoly in Minnesota, which stands as one of the most tribe-friendly deals cut on gambling proceeds in the nation. Minnesota’s 22 separate compacts with its 11 Indian tribes do not require Indian-owned gambling operations to provide any revenue or other benefits to the state. Other states have managed to extract a share of Indian gambling profits for their own budgets. By the middle of the last decade, Connecticut was receiving $300 million to $400 million a year from its two major Indian casinos. But Minnesota has no apparent means of sweetening its deal with tribal gambling interests — because, unlike the arrangements forged in many other states, Minnesota’s original deal with tribes contained no provision for periodically opening the compacts to renegotiation."

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Briana Bierschbach: Why gambling expansion remains a long-shot bet (Politics in Minnesota 10/12)