Indian Casino

A group of business people on Friday sent a letter to four Orange County and California congressional leaders urging them to "stop or delay" federal recognition of the Juanenos Band of Mission Indians and halt development of an Indian casino here. Concerned Citizens of South Orange County, which has about 30 members, called for an investigation of the band's intentions, said Fred Amendariz, the group's executive director.

Proponents of Proposition 1A have doubled the size of their campaign war chest over the past month and have now raised about $21 million, new campaign finance reports show. That's far less than the $68.6 million raised in 1998 by proponents of a similar effort, Proposition 5, which ultimately was declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court.

Labor's fight to organize Indian casino workers in California spilled into the presidential campaign Wednesday when a Native American leader accused a union of trying to derail a Democratic forum envisioned for the Morongo Indian Reservation this summer. The event's organizer said the union had pressured candidates to skip the debate because the tribe-owned casinos were strongly opposed to unionization. A union officer denied the accusation. Only two presidential candidates -- New Mexico Gov.

Sheriff Bob Brooks on Tuesday condemned a plan to bring Las Vegas-style gambling to Oxnard, saying a Nevada corporation's proposal to operate a hotel-casino for a landless Indian tribe would create crime, break up families and change the city's character. The sheriff recommended that at a May 8 hearing, the Oxnard City Council reject a plan by Las Vegas-based Paragon Gaming Corp.

Ventura County officials have rejected a Nevada gambling corporation's offer to buy acreage at Channel Islands Harbor, convert the land into an Indian reservation and build a 250-room hotel-casino with slot machines and gaming tables. The proposal, presented to the Board of Supervisors at a Jan. 23 closed session, received no support partly because supervisors concluded the Las Vegas-style resort would not fit into the laid-back oceanfront community, officials said.

Thaddeus Barsotti remembers when he could ride his bicycle along the two-lane highway next to his family farm here, meeting only an occasional slow-moving tractor. Nowadays, the bike is in the barn. Barsotti, 23, spends time coming to the aid of motorists who barrel through his fence in their race to the giant Cache Creek casino a few miles up the road. "We've had six people crash into our land," Barsotti said. "Three people have died just on this stretch in front of our place."

Gov. Gray Davis met late last week in his office with California Indian leaders who were hoping to increase their stakes in tribal gambling casinos. Later that same day, according to sources, he jetted to Palm Desert in Southern California for a political fund-raising dinner with prominent figures in the horse racing industry who are hoping to expand off-track betting. Davis says he abhors gambling.

I was checking on the earthquake kit the other day ? you know, sampling the gin to be sure it hadn't gone bad ? when in pops the college girl, back for spring break. She assumed I was sneaking a little hooch when all I was doing was looking out for my family. Obviously, a lot of the selfless things I do go totally unappreciated (though I did notice that our emergency kit is almost all booze). "Hi, Dad. " "Burp. " "Miss me?" "Of course not. " There was upheaval almost immediately.

A band of Indians that has been criticized by other tribes for signing the state's first Indian gaming compact joined forces Tuesday with Nevada casinos and others working to defeat Proposition 5, the Indian casino initiative backed by most California tribes. The Pala Band of Mission Indians, which recently announced plans for a 64,000-square-foot casino, endorsed the anti-Proposition 5 group known as the Coalition Against Unregulated Gambling.