Salt Lake City News

Implications for Utah

Indian Gambling Takes Denver Stage

By John Yewell, 3-30-05

As Western Governors meet in Denver to discuss the Indian gambling industry, the question is posed in Utah: If Indian gambling were allowed here, would we be fighting the Goshutes over the storage of nuclear waste at Skull Valley? Maybe the state of Utah should offer them a deal. Watch the casino operators in Wendover go nuts over that idea.

Here’s an interesting question, posed in her column yesterday by Deseret Morning News columnist Marjorie Cortez: What if Utah put aside its long-standing religious objections to gambling?

Writes Cortez:

"I've thought a lot about gaming in Utah in recent weeks in the context of the Skull Valley band of Goshutes, which has negotiated with a consortium of nuclear power utilities to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel rods on the tribe's reservation in Tooele County. I'm not suggesting that a full-scale Caesar's Palace-like casino would have been the answer to the Goshutes' economic woes. But with that option off the table, the tribe may have landed on a substantially riskier proposition on its reservation: becoming the de facto Yucca Mountain."

It is a point worth taking up at the meeting today in Denver of the Western Governors Association. The main purpose of the meeting is to explore possible changes in the 1988 law that legalized casinos on Indian land.

New casino proposals continue to proliferate. In Oregon, a casino planned for Cascade Locks, in the Columbia River Gorge 40 miles east of Portland, is drawing opposition.

And recent a Supreme Court decision nullified the ability of tribes to claim tax exempt status for properties purchased outside existing Indian reservation land.

According to the Associated Press, the Indian gambling industry is an $18.5 billion enterprise with 411 casinos run by 223 tribes in 28 states. The U.S. government recognizes 341 tribes nationwide.

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