California tribes seek to ban slot-like bingo machines

SACRAMENTO — Rich, politically powerful Indian tribes are pushing California legislators to outlaw some casino competition: slot-like bingo machines that generate millions of dollars for high school sports teams, the blind and disabled.

The Assembly on Wednesday voted 56 to 3 to ban the electronic machines, which tribes say violate their exclusive right to operate slot machines in California. The Senate is expected to pass the measure soon.

The proposed ban was written only two weeks ago -- months after the deadline for introducing legislation. State Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) gutted a bill about school lunches and inserted the bingo measure.

Few interest groups could pull off such a coup in the waning days of the legislative session, which ends at midnight Sunday. But the tribes are among the biggest political donors to state lawmakers.

And the tribes are business partners with the cash-starved state, which depends upon payments of more than $100 million a year from them to ease its budget problems. Some tribes have been threatening to withhold money if the state does nothing to restrict the bingo machines.

Officials of the small charities that depend on the machines say they are being put out of business by a political juggernaut.

"This is a ramrod job," Doug Bergman, president of United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Sacramento, told lawmakers last week. "You know it and I know it."

State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown declared the machines illegal last year because they do not involve paper cards. In May his agents ordered charities to cease operating them in a dozen bingo halls, mostly in Northern California. A bingo machine manufacturer appealed and a federal court judgment is pending, but the court is not expected to address the issue of whether the machines violate tribal rights.

The tribes, meanwhile, are making their case in the Legislature.

Tribes "have the political power because they have the money," said I. Nelson Rose, a Whittier Law School professor and gambling law expert.

Cedillo, who was elected to his final Senate term in 2006, received $10,800 for his campaign that year from tribes with casinos. Last year, he received $4,000 in donations from such tribes.

The senator said he presented the bill because the state has not acted aggressively enough to protect its compacts with tribes.