Our view: Casino deals must provide funds for human fallout of gambling expansion

Among the unfortunate aspects of Gov. Schwarzenegger's budget is its reliance on a vast expansion of tribal casino gambling to reinforce the state's revenues.

There's nothing wrong with consenting adults enjoying a game of chance, but counting on a jackpot is no substitute for fiscal discipline, especially when the growth of California's Indian reservation gambling industry has far outpaced the state's ability to plan and pay for its effects.

With the state's highest concentration of tribal casinos, Riverside and San Diego counties have felt that impact, for better and for worse, more than most. The infusion of cash into the area's reservations is certainly better for the lives and lifestyles of our region's original residents, and tribes in turn have reinvested in their surrounding communities. But better still would be levels of investment that reflect the transformative effect the casinos have had on the back country.

Last month, for instance, the Santa Ysabel Band of Diegueno Mission Indians opened San Diego County's newest casino, a relatively small operation overlooking Lake Henshaw, some 30 miles southeast of Temecula. The tribe was supposed to make improvements to Highway 79 South before the casino doors opened, but those improvements aren't scheduled to be done before June.

As part of the 2003 compact it signed with then-Gov. Gray Davis, the Santa Ysabel band agreed to pay San Diego County to offset its casino's impacts. That resulted in the small tribe anteing up some $320,000 per year for law enforcement-related costs, plus $300,000 to pay for problem gambling treatment and prevention.

This last contribution is especially important; as the state's casinos have expanded, so has the number of Californians whose gambling addiction makes their lives miserable. A statewide survey released in February revealed that our region is home to the highest concentration of these unfortunate souls, gambling more and more with less and less money.

That's a mere drop in the bucket of what California needs. Tribes are picking up the entire $3 million annual budget for the state's Office of Problem and Pathological Gambling - which works out to about $3 each for the state's estimated 1 million problem gamblers. The tribes and the state aren't paying enough to help those whose fortunes suffer the most when new opportunities arise to gamble their savings away.

When tribes renegotiate their compacts with the state, such contributions must be written into the new deals. That seems to be the case with the five new compacts that Gov. Schwarzenegger renegotiated with tribes with much bigger gambling operations, including the Pechanga of Temecula and Morongo of Cabazon.

More important to the governor, the renegotiated deals also promise to pay the state a larger cut of gambling revenues, up to 25 percent from some slots.

Schwarzenegger, who once railed against these "special interests" controlling the Capitol, now needs them to balance his budget. But that was an easy bet. Tougher to call is whether the renegotiated compacts, approved by the state Senate a month ago, will survive the Assembly.

Democratic legislators are objecting to the state's lack of regulatory control after a 2006 federal appeals court ruling threw out federal oversight of reservation gambling. This is no small expansion: The new compacts would add 22,500 slot machines to the big five casinos - three of which are in Riverside County - enough to fill about 10 Las Vegas-sized halls. The Pechanga Band would gain permission to add 5,500 slots to its current allotment of 2,000.

Still, most of the casino gambling horses have already left the barn. The payments tribes are being asked to make reflect only the impact of new additions to California's casinos - not the dramatic expansion that has already happened in the last five years.

While we applaud our tribal neighbors for the good deals they have squeezed out of the state, we must insist that any new compacts reflect the real impacts of casino gambling - past, present and future.