Feb. 25, 2003 
State reaches deal with Potawatomi on amended compact
The Associated Press 

 MILWAUKEE - The Forest County Potawatomi plans $120 million in additional construction, while adding 950 employees to its Milwaukee casino and offering additional games, under a compact that calls for it to pay millions more to the state, a tribal official said Tuesday.

"If I could paint the picture of what our new casino would be like I don't know what the answer is but that fact of the matter is we now have that opportunity," said Jeff Crawford, the tribe's attorney general.

He said the tribe planned to expand casino in the Menomonee Valley upward rather than outward. The tribe was also looking into business diversification, possibly adding hotels and more restaurants.

The tribe replaced its bingo hall there with a $120 million Vegas-style casino in 2000.

The compact will allow the tribe to be much more competitive with casinos in other states, he said.

The deal is similar to a tentative agreement the Oneida Nation announced last week it was completing with Doyle. That revelation prompted angry Republicans to push through a bill Friday giving lawmakers final authority over gaming compacts.

Crawford said he was disappointed by Republican legislative efforts.

"We were here before this was a state, and we will be here after the bill is passed," he said.

Republicans called the Oneida deal payback for campaign contributions tribes made to Democrats last year. Crawford said his tribe did not negotiate a deal with Doyle to allow the expansion when it gave the Democratic National Committee $200,000 during the campaign last fall.

He said the compact was negotiated at "arm's length."

The Potawatomi attorney general said the compact also allows the tribe or the casino operator to set its own betting limits and expand black jack play from 18 to 24 hours a day.

The compact also allows added variations on blackjack, craps and roulette, among other games, but it only authorizes games that are offered within 75 miles of Wisconsin.

The tribe would also no longer be subject to limits on the number of slot machines it can offer at its casinos in Milwaukee and Carter.

The tribe agreed to pay the state $40.5 million in the first year of the agreement and $43.6 million in the second. Annual payments would then become a fixed percentage in 2005 and beyond, ranging from 6 percent to 8 percent of revenues.

The tribe said Tuesday the payments are more than 6 1/2 times the current payments of $6.375 million per year.

Some said Doyle had overstepped his authority in trying to get more money from the tribes to help fix Wisconsin's massive budget deficit, and Monday's announcement of the Potawatomi agreement only fanned the flames.

"The governor has sold the state's future for a handful of magic beans," said Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer, R-West Bend.

The deal, signed by tribe chairman Harold Frank and Doyle, is subject to approval by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, state Administration Secretary Marotta said.

During a break at a meeting of the National Gov.s Association meeting in Washington Monday, Doyle suggested he would likely veto the bill the Legislature passed last week, saying it was not "very good legislation."

He said the bill could set a bad precedent because it was passed so quickly, and without any hearings.

Marotta dismissed the bill as pure politics. He said American Indian casinos are a permanent fixture in Wisconsin and Doyle's administration was aggressively trying to sign new deals on all 11 compacts that would acknowledge that reality.

He said the amended compact with the Potawatomi would serve as a model for negotiations on the other 10. He also said the deals will get more money for the state, helping avoid a tax increase despite Wisconsin's fiscal problems.

"Every dollar paid by the tribe is a dollar taxpayers don't have to bear," he said.

The Potawatomi deal would allow the state or the tribe to offer amendments to the compact to enhance regulation of gaming every five years. It also allows the two sides to propose amendments to any portion of the agreement every 25 years.

Both have to be negotiated in good faith and may be resolved by arbitration if an agreement cannot be reached.

Either side can also push for changes through negotiation, arbitration or in federal court if it believes the other party has violated a term of the agreement.

But there is no expiration date, and Republican lawmakers said last week they feared the state would never be able to change terms of the compacts without one.

Sen. Robert Welch, R-Redgranite, and other Republicans met with Doyle Thursday night after proposing the bill to give lawmakers oversight of the compacts.

Welch said they were assured that no other agreements had been signed. But the amended compact was signed Feb. 18 by Frank and Feb. 19 by Doyle - before Thursday night's meeting.

"It's mislead, mislead, mislead and then sign something and you hope you get away with it," Welch said. "I don't know what our options are at this point, but if the Legislature was outraged on Friday, this is an inferno today."

Doyle's two-year budget, announced last week, counts on an additional $237 million from the gaming compacts to help balance the state's $3.2 billion budget deficit. Wisconsin's 11 tribes paid a total of $24 million to the state in 2002.

The amendment compact designates the majority of the first two Potawatomi payments to support the University of Wisconsin. It also includes a provision that would refund the payments to the tribe and end its commitment to providing money to the state if gambling is expanded to anyone other than a federally recognized tribe.

Marotta said he hoped to finalize deals on all 11 compacts soon and the bill passed by the Legislature would have no impact on those negotiations.

He said the Oneida Nation agreement had not been finalized.