http://www.abqjournal.com/news/gambling/282060nm01-02-05.htm

Sunday, January 2, 2005

Gaming Tribes Cash In: Profits To Boost Education, Improve Quality of Life

By Mike Gallagher
Journal Investigative Reporter
A visitor to a pueblo ceremonial dance 32 years ago would have found
communal water spigots, dilapidated buildings and outhouses.
Tourists sometimes called it "quaint."
"Quaint" might be picturesque but it doesn't supply clean water for
children to drink. The correct word was "poverty."
Three decades ago, most New Mexico pueblos relied on natural resource
leases, federal money and tourist dollars spent at seasonal ceremonial
dances.
Per-capita incomes were among the lowest in the United States.
Unemployment rates in some cases approached 70 percent.
Thanks to gambling, that landscape is changing.
The millions of dollars flowing through tribal casinos are building
sewer and water systems, new schools, medical clinics and new homes for New
Mexico's gaming tribes.
New Mexico Indian Gaming Association chairman Charlie Dorame said his
pueblo, Tesuque, has spent more than $20 million in casino profits in the
last few years on infrastructure.
"That's more money than we received from the federal government since
1976," he said.
Gov. Leonard Armijo of Santa Ana Pueblo said the infrastructure
spending is essential.
"You can't have economic development without a modern water system," he
said. "You can't attract businesses without infrastructure."
Not all the new tribal economic infrastructure is hidden below ground.
Sandia is building a new resort hotel and golf course, joining Santa
Ana, which has the Tamaya resort; and Mescalero tore down the Inn of the
Mountain Gods and is building a 211-room luxury hotel and a larger casino
with 1,000 slot machines.
Gaming also has made it possible for tribes to spend millions to hire
high-powered law firms and lobbyists to pursue various economic and legal
agendas important to the pueblos, as well as some investment strategies
that have turned controversial.
In addition to a desperate economic situation before Indian gaming, the
underlying cultural values were also in danger.
People were leaving the insulated and religious pueblo life for the
military and for government jobs in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Fewer were
fluent in their native tongue. Skills like weaving and pottery-making for
religious ceremonies were dying out as older tribal members passed away.
A few years ago, only Sandia Pueblo members over the age of 50 knew how
to speak Tiwa, their native language. At Santa Ana Pueblo, the cutoff age
for speaking Keres was 48.
Now, native language classes begin in preschool at both pueblos.
"Our language was dying," said Sandia Pueblo Gov. Stuwart Paisano. "Now
100 percent of our children are being taught our native tongue."

No direct distribution
A common misperception of Indian gaming is that casino profits are
distributed directly to tribal members.
That doesn't happen in New Mexico.
To distribute casino profits to individual members, gaming tribes would
have to pass a law authorizing and explaining the distribution. Then the
tribe would need approval from the Department of the Interior.
New Mexico tribes have not gone that route.
"The (Sandia) Council's main focus is on the community," Paisano said.
"There are a lot of associated social problems that just get worse when you
hand out cash."
Santa Ana Gov. Armijo said, "We don't want to make our people dependent
on gaming money."
Dorame said handing out money "really isn't the pueblo way."
"We don't weigh success by the amount of money people have in their
pocket. It is the success of the community that matters."
Every pueblo leader the Journal interviewed said the tribal government
views casino profits like a city or town would view gross receipts and
property taxes.
"I think this attitude stems from basic values," Paisano said. "The
Council always goes back to what is important— culture, language and
religion."
Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chávez was an outspoken opponent of legalizing
gaming, including Indian casinos.
"I've come to accept the reality that gaming isn't going away," Chávez
said. "But what has impressed me the most is the sophistication the pueblos
have shown in handling the money."

Home improvement
Ask a tribal leader about what the tribe has done with casino profits
and invariably they start talking about sewer hookups.
"We have a crisis with ground-water contamination in this valley," said
Ron Lovato, San Juan Pueblo's development director. "We are working on it.
We have 95 percent of the homes hooked into the sewer system."
San Juan is a medium-sized pueblo with more than 700 homes now hooked
up to the sewer system.
At Sandia, the hookup rate is at 98 percent, Paisano said.
Replacing septic tanks with sewer systems is an expensive undertaking.
Running sewer lines to a residence can cost between $10,000 and
$15,000. Hooking the home up to the sewer line can cost more than $1,200.
Those costs don't include waste-water treatment.
Local governments normally issue bonds to fund water systems, a method
that until gaming was unavailable to tribes because they lacked the
long-term revenues used to pay off the bonds.
"We pay cash," Lovato said.
Sewer systems weren't the only infrastructure missing from tribal
lands.
"There were no road departments. No parks and recreation departments.
No trash collection," Lovato said. "We are in fact building from scratch.
The casino funded the trash transfer station."
Tesuque's Dorame said, "I think the Indian Gaming Compacts are too
short. We are 20 to 30 years away from building all the necessary
infrastructure."
Tesuque, Dorame said, needs 110 new homes but federal money for housing
on the pueblo amounts to about $150,000 a year.
"We are pumping in the rest," he said.
At Santa Ana and Sandia pueblos, the housing programs are producing new
homes after each tribe set up a mortgage program.
Sandia's operates like a traditional mortgage but with zero interest.
Santa Ana's housing program uses life insurance annuities to reduce a
monthly mortgage payment on a $100,000 home to $250.
"Banks wouldn't loan money for homes on tribal lands because they
couldn't foreclose," Paisano said. "We used casino profits to create a
mortgage fund that tribal members can tap into after a local bank reviews
their qualifications.
"Young people left the pueblo because they had to live with mom and
dad," Paisano said. "Now we have a new housing program and people are
coming back."

Seeking to diversify
Many tribes have been taking their own advice and are trying to expand
their economic base.
Unemployment rates on Indian lands nationally run between 45 and 55
percent.
Six of the gaming pueblos— Sandia, Isleta, Santa Ana, Taos, San Juan
and Pojoaque— have unemployment rates in the single digits. Sandia Pueblo
has an unemployment rate of 1 percent, according to the Bureau of Indian
Affairs.
The success isn't uniform. Gaming tribes such as Mescalero and
Jicarilla have unemployment rates of 44 and 33 percent respectively,
according to the same BIA report.
A 2002 national study found that tribes with casinos saw a 26 percent
increase in Indian employment and the percentage of working poor dropped by
14 percent.
That is a trend tribal leaders want to continue.
Some Indian casinos are expanding operations to include hotels and golf
courses in the hopes of expanding the gambling market to out-of-state and
overseas tourists.
"We're going to have work closely with the local hotel associations,"
Dorame said. "It will require partnerships off the reservation to
accomplish this."
Mescalero Apache casino is working on a $2 million advertising campaign
in conjunction with Ruidoso and the Ruidoso Downs horse track and casino.
The tribe will contribute the bulk of the money, targeting potential
tourists from Texas.
Santa Ana Pueblo has been courting retail outlets for property set
aside on U.S. 550.
Sandia Pueblo bought the Coronado Airport near I-25 for a high-tech
industrial park and has plans for an RV park.
"Our council has taken a conservative approach to off-reservation
investments," said Paisano. "We get approached all the time."
San Juan Pueblo is expanding an airstrip in the Española Valley in
hopes of attracting manufacturing jobs.
"We've met with officials at Los Alamos Laboratory to try to get some
interest in developing business offshoots in the Española Valley," San Juan
development director Lovato said. "We've been actively recruiting
manufacturers to the area. We hope the airport serves as a linchpin to
those efforts."

A rocky transition
Laguna Pueblo has built a grocery store. Many tribes have built gas
stations that pay no state gasoline taxes.
But not all has been smooth. Sandia found itself part of a nationwide
story when a Senate committee launched an investigation of a Washington
lobbyist-public relations team that had been paid more than $45 million by
more than a dozen tribes, including Sandia.
Sandia had hired Jack Abramoff to lobby for congressional approval of a
land settlement agreement involving more than 9,000 acres on the west face
of the Sandia Mountains.
Paisano said the tribe was not satisfied with the firm's work and was
upset when it was disclosed that Abramoff in e-mails had referred to his
Indian clients as "morons," "monkeys" and "losers."
Paisano said, "There have been missteps."
Tribes have found that getting into new businesses hasn't been a sure
thing.
Santa Ana Pueblo went to court after a $1 million investment in a
Chinese computer school went awry.
But the bulk of the tribe's economic development efforts have been in
the tourism industry.
Bob Ortiz, a planner at Santa Ana Pueblo, said, "We developed the Hyatt
Tamaya resort and opened it. Then the attacks of 9/11 took place and we
took a $1 million loss, but it has bounced back."
Sandoval County recently helped the tribe restructure and lower
interest rates on its resort debt by providing conduit financing for more
than $60 million in bonds.
"Right now 90 percent of the tribal budget comes from gaming. That's
our budget," Ortiz said. "The tribe is trying to move beyond that."

Recovering lands
Tribal leaders stressed the need to form alliances with non-Indian
governments on issues from the environment to economic development.
The issue that may bring conflict is land acquisition.
Like disputes over water rights, this issue predates Indian gaming. But
casino profits have given tribes the economic power to buy, or bring
lawsuits for, property that individual tribes believe was lost under
Spanish, Mexican or United States rule.
Sandia, Acoma, Taos, Santa Clara and Isleta have all bought or
recovered lands in recent years.
In some cases, the tribes sought the properties for religious reasons
or to protect religious sites, as in the case of Taos Pueblo's purchase of
a ranch adjacent to the Blue Lake property.
Other purchases have been for economic development reasons, like
Sandia's purchase of the Coronado Airport on North I-25.
If the tribes have the property declared Indian Trust Lands, the
properties come off the tax rolls.
Depending on location, the tribes can also run into land use, access
and zoning issues.
Sandia concluded a settlement in 2002 with homeowners and the federal
government in its attempt to reclaim the west face of the Sandias. The
agreement basically blocks development, protects existing homeowners and
public access and secures Sandia's access to the land for religious
observances.
Isleta Pueblo, meanwhile, is seeking to extend its immunity from civil
lawsuits to property it has acquired off the reservation. Both the New
Mexico Court of Appeals and Supreme Court have rejected the pueblo's
argument, but the pueblo has asked for it to be reconsidered.
One tribal leader told the Journal that land acquisitions for religious
reasons are high on many tribes' priority lists.
He suggested that tribes are more likely to be willing partners with
local governments on lands acquired for economic development.
But properties obtained for religious reasons are likely to be closed
off to the general population and lead to conflict.

Stitching a society
Bricks and mortar are one form of infrastructure.
Education and health are just as important.
Among New Mexico tribes, diabetes is considered an epidemic that leads
to heart disease, kidney failure and amputations.
Nationwide, Native Americans are twice as likely to develop diabetes
than non-Hispanic whites and amputation rates are three to four times
higher among Indians than the general population, according to the American
Diabetes Association.
Several tribes have built medical clinics and wellness centers to
combat health problems like diabetes that have troubled their communities
for years.
Isleta Pueblo set up programs to teach healthy lifestyles to children
and adults in a recreation center that includes an Olympic-size pool. The
tribe also provides diabetes education programs and a medical clinic.
The Mescalero Apache tribe built a full-service dialysis unit that
serves tribal members and people in the surrounding community.
"We're able to combine Indian Heath Services and pueblo money to expand
services to include an herbalist, physical therapist, a pharmacy, and
counselors for substance abuse," Paisano said. "It's worked tremendously."
Many tribes offer college and high school scholarship programs, but
Sandia's starts in the first grade.
"We will pay tuition for any child on the pueblo to attend any private
school," Paisano said. "We also provide transportation. We require a
commitment from the parents that they will help their children with
homework and the students maintain their grades."
Most tribes now pay most of the cost of preschool programs, and have
funded programs for the elderly and teens.
"We all look to how all our people can benefit from this (gaming),"
said Santa Ana's Armijo.
"Where is the benefit to the tribe, is the first question we ask."

Copyright 2005 Albuquerque Journal