The US House passed something called the Gila Bend Indian Reservation Lands Replacement Clarification Act yesterday. It would effectively block the Tohono O’Odham Nation from building a casino on land that they acquired in Glendale.
Trent Franks has been pushing for this legislation, with cheerleading from Jan Brewer and the Gila River Indian Community, who’d rather not have the competition. The chief complaint is that the area will have trouble handling the traffic and noise from the casino.
The area currently includes a football stadium and a hockey arena. But hey, traffic and noise are okay as long as the right kind of people are making money.
So, how did the TO’s get the land? Well, back in 1986, the federal government agreed to allow the tribe to acquire land to make up for the 10,000 acres that were flooded in a water project. The tribe acquired the land subject to the agreement, which said that they could use the land as they saw fit, in 2003.
So, let’s summarize: the feds and a tribe come to an agreement over land, and as soon as the tribe looks like they could make some money, the feds are looking to go back on their agreement.
Have we read this story before?
NB – The only two Arizona representatives to vote against this were Ron Barber and Raúl Grijalva, who has been the point person on the issue.
2 Comments
I’m still trying to figure out why Nancy Pelosi and Ed Pastor both voted for this Trent Franks bill. I’ve been following this for a while and this was such dirty legislation created to keep the TO Nation from earning money that Glendale felt they should get…
Watch what else gets built around there that’s not on T O land just to show that Glendale’s excuses are motivated by money.
I love the irony of Glendale, whose economic development strategy is based on the idea of poaching from other cities, screaming and yelling that someone else wants a piece of their pie.
Trying to find it required more work than I was willing to do, but I seem to remember hearing about some poll that suggested that there was not as much concern among actual Glendale residents about the casino than the gnashing of teeth by the City would indicate. It will be interesting to see if what happens to this issue after Manny Cruz gets elected as Mayor.