Opinion: President Obama turns pro-casino with administration

Thursday, June 30, 2011  

"When he was a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama was skeptical to the point of downright hostility toward casinos. His opposition was still in evidence in the earliest stages of his presidential candidacy.

The Obama administration, however, is anything but. In June, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Larry Echo Hawk, who heads the Bureau of Indian Affairs, rescinded a January 2008 memorandum issued by an outgoing Bush administration official—a memorandum that strongly asserted a policy of limiting the ability of Native American tribes to acquire off-reservation land for the purpose of building and running casinos. “The 2008 guidance memorandum was unnecessary and was issued without the benefit of tribal consultation,” Echo Hawk said. President Obama recently met with tribal leaders, many of whose reservations have seen unprecedented economic benefit from off-reservation gamblers spending money in tribally owned casinos.

On-reservation casinos exist in every state where a federally recognized tribe has a reservation. But at this writing, several state governors are actively opposing plans for off-reservation casinos. Tribes in Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and California are actively seeking to establish more off-reservation casinos. The Seminole tribe of Florida, which operates a casino near Miami, is seeking to purchase land in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and to run a tribally owned casino there, more than a thousand miles from its home."

Get the Story:
Bruce Fisher: A Pro-Casino Presidency? (Artvoice 6/30)