Timing can be everything and that seems to be the case for the long-suffering Narragansett Indian Tribe and its quest to open a casino in Rhode Island – a battle the tribe appears to have all but abandoned while competitors with more prominent political support and a more advantageous set of economic circumstances begin to take it on.
“You can only ask the same question so many times,” Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas told Providence Business News. “I guess squeezed out is as good a term as any. The support isn’t there [and] we don’t have gaming on our radar right now.”
“Squeezed out” is the term many might use to explain the tribe’s seemingly abrupt departure from the Rhode Island casino ring after the state legislature approved allowing voters to determine whether Twin River can become a full-fledged casino by adding table games – something the tribe had vigorously pursued for years. A similar proposal benefiting Newport Grand is pending in the Senate.
To other observers, however, the situation is the inevitable outcome of the tribe continually being blocked politically and never quite selling state residents on the economic incentives of allowing gambling.
While the tribe has made legal maneuvers to try to block the November vote, Thomas insists that’s about fairness – not an attempt to keep its own casino chances alive.
“It’s unfortunate that [they] have been cut out of this given the tremendous disadvantages they’ve suffered,” said Maureen Moakley, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island. “It was timing. They’ve been shut out in an environment where there could have been some redress of the [difficulties] they’ve endured over the long haul. Frankly, it’s a tragedy.”
The tribe’s public struggle began in the early 1990s when the early success of Foxwoods casino in nearby southeastern Connecticut inspired momentum to build one in Rhode Island, with warnings that the state was losing out with residents going there to gamble and, in time, to stay the weekend, dine out and shop.
Announcing its intention to build a full-scale resort casino on its 1,800 acres of land in Charlestown, the tribe began fighting to regain regulatory control of that land, which was put under state regulation in 1978 as part of the federal Rhode Island Indian Claims Settlement Act.
The land was put under restriction – barring the tribe from operating it as a separate entity for gambling – just before the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act passed in 1988.
“The reality is they are the only tribe in the country who have been stripped of their rights under the IGRA,” said Clyde Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. “People don’t like to revisit that, but ultimately that’s their problem.”
Federal relief has not been the tribe’s only failed avenue. Voter support also eluded them.
Some blame the organization of the first ballot vote the tribe lost – in 1994 – for its collapse.
“It was very difficult. There were six or seven [questions] on the ballot, and that was a huge mistake,” Richard Licht, director of the R.I. Department of Administration, told business leaders at a recent Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce policy forum.
There were five referenda questions that year. Each asked voters, locally and statewide, to approve a casino facility in five communities, including Coventry, which was the tribe’s favored site.
The tribe tried again in 2006, when a ballot question asked voters if Rhode Island should amend the state constitution – after the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled it be done in that manner – to allow a tribal casino.
Again they said no.
The tribe did have some political support over the years. Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy was a public supporter of the tribe’s rights beginning in the 1990s. Former Gov. Bruce Sundlum backed a mid-’90s West Greenwich deal that voters shot down. Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee last year mediated talks for the tribe to possibly purchase Twin River, but the owners ultimately declined.
“There were laudable attempts by key politicians to try to bring them into the mix, but the politics just [didn’t] work,” Moakley said. “The political establishment sort of waited until the last minute to deal with this and now in the scramble to quickly put a casino into place, they’ve really given the advantage to the existing casinos.”
Enter Twin River, in Lincoln, and Newport Grand, in Newport, which could quickly achieve what the tribe said was inevitably necessary more than a decade ago.
Though Twin River is looking to iron out a tentative deal with the state that would outline for voters the tax-revenue stream of a larger facility, Thomas doesn’t believe that’s enough.
The Narragansett tribe last fall filed a lawsuit claiming the November ballot questions unconstitutional. If the tribe had to amend the constitution to open a casino, so should anyone else, he says.
“I think they make a legitimate point that there was a process in place in the past that proponents had to go through and that process is not in place right now,” said Rep. Robert Jacquard, D-Cranston. “There is a lot of revenue at stake, but the voters are not stupid, either. They are going to want to have these questions answered before they’re going to go ahead and vote for this.”
Rhode Island stands to lose anywhere from $80 million to $200 million in revenue if it fails to keep up with competing facilities, according to various reports.
The state receives 61 percent of slot-machine money from Twin River and Newport Grand, which contributes to gambling being its third-largest single revenue source.
Licht cautions against viewing table games as a grand money maker.
“It’s not driving the economy. It’s feeding the government. I think people have to be realistic about that,” he said.
Adding table games wouldn’t boost either facility into a destination casino, Barrow said, adding the state might play catch up more than move ahead at this point.
While Twin River insists loyalty will keep customers there, Barrow says only time will tell if the market will support up to seven casinos between Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut, even taking into consideration the recently reported woes of Foxwoods’ $2.3 billion debt, blamed partially on growing too fast.
“[You’re] talking about mitigating losses, not eliminating them,” Barrow said. “If they don’t have table games, the loss would be greater. … I still think overall you’ll see a net decline.”
That sentiment isn’t lost on the Narragansett tribe.
“Eventually it will get saturated, and that will speak for itself,” Thomas said. “Quite honestly, everything I said in ’06 [is now true] and I just think the boat is way out to sea.” •
