California may not get $9 billion from tribal gambling deals
That figure appears in ads backing Props. 94, 95, 96 and 97. But that amount would accumulate over decades, and there's no guarantee it would ever happen.
SACRAMENTO — A barrage of television ads says that the gambling expansion compacts on Tuesday's ballot would pump $9 billion into the state's empty coffers and help avert a tax increase.
But it would take decades for the state to get that kind of money from the agreements reached with four Southern California Indian tribes -- and there's no guarantee it would ever happen.
The compacts dictate that the state get at least $3 billion from the four tribes' casino business over the next 22 years. Whether it gets more depends on how much, and how quickly, the tribes expand their casinos and whether their customers keep new slot machines busy.
It is unlikely they will expand quickly enough to help fix a projected $14.5-billion budget gap. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's financial experts assume new slot machines would not be installed until September at the earliest if voters approve Propositions 94, 95, 96 and 97, which would uphold the deals the governor struck with tribes and lawmakers approved.
Tribal leaders said in recent interviews with The Times and in testimony before the Legislature last year that they hesitate to rush into large-scale expansion.
"We have to go with the market," said Daniel J. Tucker, chairman of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation. "We're not going to go and just put in 3,000 machines and think it's going to work."
Opponents bristle at the ads, paid for by the San Diego and Riverside county tribes that made the deals with the state. One says that the compacts "will provide over $9 billion to fund essential state services without raising taxes or putting us further in debt."
"They slapped a big number on the screen and in smaller print, or not at all, mention that that is over a period of two decades," said Scott Macdonald, spokesman for the "No on Propositions 94, 95, 96 and 97" campaign.
Some of the ads say $9 billion is a two-decade total. And the four tribes say that they will be required to pay the state a combined minimum of $123 million a year -- even without adding a single slot machine -- if voters uphold the four compacts by approving the propositions. If the tribes add more machines, they pay more.
It's not clear that all $123 million would land in the state treasury. Schwarzenegger has already proposed shifting $40 million in tribal revenue to ensure that 71 tribes with few or no slot machines get payments the state promised when it first struck gambling deals with Indians in 1999.
