Oregon tribes prepare for upheaval after feds OK off-reservation casino in Minnesota, and likely one in Medford

By NIGEL JAQUISS/Willamette Week

On Nov. 8, three days after Democrats lost the White House, President Joe Biden’s administration approved an off-reservation casino in Minnesota. Leaders of two Oregon tribes greeted that decision with dismay – saying it could radically alter the landscape for gambling in Oregon, on reservations and off.

That’s because the Biden administration is also considering a sheaf of other applications—a couple of them in Oregon.

One of those came true Wednesday in a decision that could have far-reaching implications for Oregon’s delicately balanced gambling market. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs notified Oregon officials last week that it would issue a final environmental impact statement supporting an off-reservation casino that the Coquille Indian Tribe wants to build in Medford.

After publishing its decision in the Federal Register, the bureau will open a 30-day public comment period. After that, the agency will produce a final document, a record of decision which typically — but not always — affirms the EIS.

In the view of two tribes, the fallout could upend Oregon’s tightly controlled gambling market, lead to a mega-casino on the outskirts of Portland, and create gaming alternatives that could threaten the primacy of the Oregon Lottery, the state’s second-largest source of revenue after income taxes.

The chairs of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians oppose the pending Oregon applications. After Biden’s team acted on the Minnesota application, the tribal chairs requested an urgent meeting with Gov. Tina Kotek, who referees disputes between Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes.

“We need to meet with you as soon as possible,” Cheryle Kennedy of the Grand Ronde and Carla Keene of the Cow Creek Band wrote to the governor Nov. 14. “We expect more [approvals] to follow, including the Salem and Medford casinos, as early as Thanksgiving week. If these casinos move forward, they will destroy the balance of gaming in Oregon. The Grand Ronde will have no choice but to file a casino application on lands we own in Wood Village.”

Cow Creek CEO Michael Rondeau tells WW his tribe would also act.

“If the Medford casino is approved, we will have no choice but to explore every opportunity to provide for our people, which would mean expanding gaming into urban areas, like Eugene, and providing mobile gaming statewide,” Rondeau says.

That could compete with Oregon Lottery machines that generate more than $1 billion in revenues annually. Tribal casinos collectively generated about $650 million in revenue in 2019, the latest year for which data is available.

Perhaps the dissident tribes are posturing. But Gov. Kotek has good reason to take them seriously. For more than 30 years, Oregon has observed a delicate policy unique among U.S. states — each of the nine federally recognized tribes, which are sovereign nations, is allowed to operate one casino on its reservation. The state operates video slot machines everywhere else.

For over three decades, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians has sought to open an off-reservation casino along Interstate 5 on the north edge of Salem, while for more than a decade the Coquille Indian Tribe has pursued a second casino off reservation in Medford. Both new locations would attract far more traffic than the tribes’ current on-reservation casinos and would cut significantly into the Grand Ronde’s and Cow Creek Band’s markets. That’s why their peers fear approvals from the departing Biden administration.

“It is common for outgoing administrations to make decisions affecting tribes after an election and before the next administration takes office,” the two tribal chairs wrote to Kotek. “Especially when the incumbent administration is defeated.”

Not long after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized on-reservation gambling in 1987, Gov. Barbara Roberts initiated a one-tribe, one-casino policy that each subsequent Oregon governor has upheld with minor exceptions; two tribes have small second casinos.

From the beginning, some tribes have bristled at the policy, which requires that the casinos be on reservation land. Roberts, for instance, blocked a proposal by the Siletz Tribe, whose reservation is east of Newport, that it be allowed to open a casino in Salem.

For gambling critics, Oregon’s policy — which tribes note is not a law — has limited the proliferation of tribal casinos, which are more common in states such as California and Washington. It has also had the effect of creating winners and losers: The Grand Ronde, which operates the Spirit Mountain casino closest to Portland and Salem benefits from the Willamette Valley’s population density. Cow Creek, located farther south on I-5, also benefits, while the Coquille, Siletz and other rural tribes suffer.

Public opinion on gambling expansion is tricky to categorize. Oregon aggressively promotes the state lottery, which is mandated to maximize revenues and thousands of bars and restaurants profit from Oregonians’ use of video slot machines.

But in 2010, voters overwhelmingly rejected ballot measures that would have legalized non-tribal casino gambling and allowed the development of a major casino at the former Multnomah Greyhound Park in Wood Village, which the Grand Ronde subsequently purchased.

And at the urging of the tribes, Gov. Kate Brown and the Oregon Department of Justice in February 2022 blocked a major gambling project at Grants Pass Downs, which the agency determined would violate the state’s ban on private casinos and lotteries.

Shortly after taking office in 2023, Kotek stated her position to all nine tribes.

“I do not favor an expansion of gaming,” Kotek wrote April 13, 2023 and specifically called out the Coquille’s plans.

“I wish to state my opposition to the Coquille Tribe’s Medford Casino project,” she wrote. “This proposal would not only lead to the expansion of gaming in the area but would create many more concerns about the expansion of gaming statewide.”

Northern California tribes also oppose the Medford project, and Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote to Biden in August discouraging new tribal casinos in his state.

Advocates for expansion beg to differ.

Ray Doering, a spokesman for the Coquille Tribe, dismisses “idle speculation” by critics of the Medford project. He adds that the Coquille have no information about federal approval and that the Cow Creek’s concerns about competition are overblown, noting previous casino expansions “did not change the gaming dynamics in the state.”

The Siletz Tribe has made similar arguments. And last year, the tribe’s attorney, Craig Dorsay raised another point.

“Tribes are the state’s biggest gaming competitor and the state is choking off tribal gaming revenue,” Dorsay told lawmakers in April 2023.

There are two paths to approval for a tribal casino. The most direct one — which the Coquille are pursuing in Medford — requires only federal approval. It’s an end around the governor’s office. Competitors fear, based on the Nov. 8 Minnesota decision, that such approval is imminent.

The Siletz project in Salem is more complicated. It is part of what’s called a “two-part” process, which requires both state and federal approval. But if Medford gets a green light, the Grand Ronde and Cow Creek fear, that would undermine the one-tribe, one-casino policy and reduce Kotek’s grounds for blocking it.

Kotek spokeswoman Roxy Mayer says the governor’s opposition to gambling expansion remains unchanged, but she’ll wait to see what the feds decide.

“As the Bureau of Indian Affairs evaluates applications,” Mayer says, “the governor is committed to continued dialogue with each of the nine federally recognized sovereign tribes about their plans.”

Oregon’s senior U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, like his colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation, wants to hold the line.

“Sen. Wyden respects all tribes exercising their sovereignty, but strongly believes Oregon has done well to strike a careful balance around the principle that each federally recognized tribe should operate one major casino,” says Wyden spokesman Hank Stern. “That principle has proven a good balance to give all tribes an equal opportunity at economic success, and upending that harmony poses a needlessly risky gamble.”

• This story was originally published Nov. 20, 2024 by Willamette Week.