An artist's rendition of the proposed Anthony casino
Could a proposal to build an off-reservation casino in Anthony get new life? That’s the question The Santa Fe New Mexican explored this weekend.
The answer? The U.S. Department of Interior is taking a second look at a policy put in place last year that led to the rejection of the application by Northern New Mexico’s Jemez Pueblo to build the casino some 300 miles south on Interstate 25.
Whether the policy might be overturned isn’t clear, but George Skibine, a deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was quoted by the newspaper as saying it’s “an important issue. It’s a controversial issue and they’re rethinking it.”
From the newspaper article:
“BIA spokesman Gary Garrison told The New Mexican last week that the Interior Department currently is reviewing all policies and directives instituted by the Bush administration. No decision, he said, has been made about the off-reservation gaming rule, which requires any off-reservation casino site to be within commuting distance of the reservation making the request.”
The Interior Department rejected the Jemez proposal in January 2008, saying the casino would not significantly improve the unemployment rate among members of the pueblo and might encourage reservation residents to leave their homes and travel 300 miles south to find work, so the “negative impacts on reservation life could be considerable.”
The Jemez wanted to build the casino along with Santa Fe art dealer and developer Gerald Peters. The New Mexican quoted a Peters’ spokeswoman as saying this weekend that the group will “be waiting to see if the Obama administration makes any favorable changes.”
“I hope they change (the decision),” the newspaper quoted Denise Greenlaw Ramonas as saying. “We’ll see.”
A controversial proposal
The Jemez proposal has been controversial. When news of the plan first became public in August 2005, Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino owner Stan Fulton waged a public campaign to try to buy opposition to the casino. Several legislators took Fulton’s side after he paid political blogger Joe Monahan to help form the Committee to Protect Doña Ana County, which argued that allowing one off-reservation casino in the county would open the floodgates for many more.
Fulton also gained the support of several New Mexico State University officials when he changed a provision in his will so that the university would only get half ownership of his casino when he died if no other casinos existed nearby. Before that, his will gave half of the casino to NMSU without conditions.
Meanwhile, residents of the poverty stricken community of Anthony organized and gathered several thousand signatures in support of the casino proposal with the help of a public relations campaign waged by Peters. The Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners worked out a deal with Peters, who would have operated the proposed casino, to provide services if the land was placed in federal trust, and also convinced Peters to make several promises, including hiring local workers and paying 100 percent of their health-care costs.
Such promises by Peters won over other public officials, including some lawmakers, but then-state Attorney General Patricia Madrid said Peters’ agreement with Doña Ana County was illegal. Madrid later formally objected to the casino proposal, which has earned her lots of headlines related to a pay-to-play controversy.