Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed away California’s share of future tribal casino revenue in a new 25-year gaming compact with the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe — a move critics have blasted as a giveaway.
The agreement, which was signed Monday, authorizes the tribe to operate up to two casinos with as many as 1,200 slot machines and other Las Vegas-style games on eligible trust land in San Bernardino County.
Unlike the tribe’s previous gaming compact, however, the new deal no longer requires Fort Mojave to share a percentage of casino revenue with California.
Instead, the tribe will primarily reimburse the state’s regulatory costs and — if it operates more than 350 gaming devices — contribute 0.5% of its net win to a local impact mitigation fund.
Kyle Kirkland, president of the California Gaming Association and owner of Club One Casino in Fresno, said the compact continues a decades-long shift away from requiring tribes to share gaming revenue with the state.
“My card room pays $1 million annually to the city of Fresno,” Kirkland said, noting three tribal casinos operate within about an hour of his business but pay no state taxes.”
“What was sold to the California public is very different from what is happening today. It is a scam.”
Neither Newsom’s office nor the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe responded to The Post’s requests for comment.
Tribal casinos generated a record $46.2 billion in gross gaming revenue last year, according to a report by Casino.org.
Earlier this month, The Post found that a five-member Northern California tribe had received tens of millions of dollars in federal and state funding despite years of allegations from its own members that tribal leaders were exploiting its sovereign status.
A Newsom-backed state commission also approved the transfer of a popular Mendocino County beach to three Indigenous tribes.
Newsom’s new compact marks a significant departure from the tribe’s 2004 gaming agreement negotiated under then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That compact authorized up to 1,500 gaming devices and required Fort Mojave to make escalating payments tied to the number of slot machines in operation. Those payments included contributions to California’s Revenue Sharing Trust Fund, which helps support tribes with little or no casino gaming, along with additional payments based on gaming revenue.
The new compact scraps those revenue-sharing provisions. Fort Mojave will no longer make payments into either the Revenue Sharing Trust Fund or the Tribal Nation Grant Fund, limiting its financial obligations largely to regulatory cost reimbursements and local impact mitigation payments required under the agreement.
The change reflects a dramatically different legal landscape following the Ninth Circuit’s 2010 decision in Rincon Band of Luiseño Mission Indians v. Schwarzenegger.
The court ruled California could not require tribes to make general revenue-sharing payments simply for the right to operate casinos because those payments amounted to an unlawful tax under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
Financial obligations must be tied to legitimate regulatory costs, mitigation payments or other permissible consideration.
The ruling sharply reduced California’s leverage in compact negotiations, and more recent agreements have largely abandoned the broad revenue-sharing formulas common in earlier compacts.
Still, critics argue the decision did not prevent the state from negotiating stronger financial terms in exchange for valuable gaming rights.
“[California] is actually giving up billions annually,” Kirkland said. “In the short run, in any other state they would be giving up to 10% to 50% of slot revenue.”
Under the new agreement, Fort Mojave may operate one casino on its existing California trust lands and potentially build a second casino on additional land near Needles — if the property is taken into trust by the federal government and receives the required approvals.
The tribe, whose reservation spans California, Arizona and Nevada along the Colorado River, already operates the Avi Resort & Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, and Spirit Mountain Casino in Arizona. The California compact would allow it to expand its gaming operations into California for the first time.
The compact still requires ratification by the state Legislature, approval by the U.S. Department of the Interior and publication in the Federal Register before taking effect.
