PHOENIX — The Tohono O’odham Nation will finally be able to conduct full-scale gaming at its new casino in Glendale.
In an agreement announced Wednesday, the state will give up on its contention that the tribe acted illegally in building a casino in the Phoenix area. That has resulted in the state Department of Gaming refusing to provide the necessary certification for operation of a full-blown casino.
The facility has been open since last year. But while the devices available to customers look like slot machines, they essentially are a form of interlinked bingo, something considered Class II gaming that federal law blocks the state from controlling.
True slot machines and table games like blackjack and poker, all forms of Class III gaming, have until now been prohibited because of the state’s inaction.
In exchange, the tribe agreed it will not attempt to open any more casinos in the Phoenix area, at least in the immediate future.
The wording of the deal goes through the end of the gaming compacts between the state and the tribe in 2026, plus at least 15 years or however long the next gaming compact lasts, which could be another 20 years beyond 2026.
That provision is important to the state because there is some legal question about whether a 1986 federal law allowing the tribe to expand its reservation would actually allow for more gaming sites.
The deal also requires the director of the state Department of Liquor Licenses and Control to withdraw his objection to the tribe’s application for a liquor license for the facility. Tribal officials have said the state agency has been dragging its feet as Gov. Doug Ducey and predecessor Jan Brewer have fought since 2009 to keep the casino from operating.
Tribal Chairman Edward Manuel praised the deal.
“It establishes an agreement concerning the nation’s right to conduct Class III gaming on its West Valley land and it brings to an end the final dispute that was constraining this important project,” he said in a written statement.
That includes not just building a real casino — the current one is operating in what eventually would be a warehouse — but also plans for a hotel and resort to anchor the $550 million complex.
Ducey said he was glad to finally extinguish the years of litigation between the state and the tribe.
While the state never wanted a casino in Glendale — there were legal efforts to block it and charges by the state’s attorney that the tribe had defrauded voters — the governor said Wednesday that at this point his key concern was making sure that situation was not replicated elsewhere.
“This agreement ... ensures that there are meaningful restrictions on additional casinos in the greater Phoenix metro area,” Ducey said.
The next step is for the Department of Gaming to act on the tribe’s request to certify the facility and its employees. How quickly that can be done remains unclear.
At that point, the tribe will be able to replace the linked-bingo machines with full-blown slot machines that can have various themes and be programmed for different kinds of payouts.
Poker and blackjack players, however, may have to wait until the new casino is actually built. Tribal officials did not immediately release a timeline for that.
The battle traces its roots to the 1960 construction by the federal government of the Painted Rock Dam on the Gila River, near what had been the San Lucy District of the Tohono O’odham Reservation. Flooding from the dam made the nearly 10,000 acres of the community economically unusable.
In 1986, Congress gave the tribe $30 million to buy replacement land in unincorporated areas of Pima, Pinal or Maricopa counties, with the option of having it become part of the reservation.
Then, in 2002, voters approved Proposition 202, an initiative giving tribes the exclusive right to operate casino gaming in Arizona in exchange for a share of the profits. Voters were told that gaming would be limited to existing reservations.
The following year, the Tohono O’odham Nation, using a corporate alias, bought a parcel of land on the edge of Glendale. Its true ownership did not become known until 2009, when the tribe asked the U.S. Department of Interior to make it part of the reservation, a necessary precursor to gaming.
That resulted in a series of lawsuits by the state and other tribes who contended that land purchased after the 2002 initiative cannot legally have gaming under the terms voters had approved. But U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell pointed out that the voter-approved compact actually entitles the tribe to do what it is doing.
The remaining legal fight in front of Campbell involves claims the tribe defrauded the state and purposely misled voters in 2002.
The deal has the apparent blessing of the Gila River Indian Community, which has the closest casino to the Glendale site and stands to lose the most business. But in a prepared statement, tribal Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said the bar on future casinos in the area “represent a victory for every Arizona tribe concerned about protecting what gaming means to our people and our economies.”
Still, Lewis felt compelled to take a last slap at the Tohono O’odham Nation, calling it “special interests who had sought to further expand gaming in metro Phoenix.”
The deal also puts an end to efforts by some members of the state’s congressional delegation to retroactively amend the 1986 law to bar the tribe from operating a casino on the lands it acquired with federal dollars.
“I continue to oppose the air-dropping of Indian casinos on land that is not contiguous to an existing reservation,” Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who sponsored one of those measures, said in a prepared statement.
But he said the deal not only ends years of litigation but “eliminates the need for federal legislation.”
Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Arizona, who opposed that federal legislation, cheered the deal, saying it was time to “finally move on” after $10 million in legal fees spent by all sides on the battle.
