The city of La Center will not appeal the federal decision allowing the Cowlitz Indian Tribe to establish a reservation and build a casino near the city.
Mayor Jim Irish said the council decided against fighting in court the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Dec. 23 decision but may choose to intervene later.
“We don’t know what we’d appeal it on,” Irish said. “The cardrooms have. The Grand Ronde have. Now Clark County has. If the council decides to do anything, we will decide to intervene maybe on one side or the other.”
The city council, Irish said, has not decided whether it will support, oppose or stay neutral on the tribe’s plan to build a casino on a 152-acre reservation at the Interstate 5 junction near La Center.
Clark County filed an appeal in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Monday. The county was joined by the city of Vancouver; nearby property owners Al Alexanderson and Greg and Susan Gilbert; Dragonslayer Inc. and Michels Development, operators of the four La Center cardrooms; and Citizens Against Reservation Shopping, a group that includes Scott Campbell, publisher of The Columbian.
The county argues that in granting the Cowlitz Tribe’s trust application, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar and Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk failed to take a “hard look” at the environmental consequences and ignored a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
The decision in Carcieri v. Salazar restricted the federal government’s ability to take land into trust for tribes not under federal jurisdiction prior to 1934. The Cowlitz Tribe was federally recognized in 2000.
Irish said the Carcieri decision doesn’t give the city grounds for an appeal.
“Our whole discussion for the last eight, nine years, the city was against the casino going in because of the social and economic impacts to the city,” Irish said. “Carcieri doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
The city submitted concerns to the BIA on the project’s environmental impact statement, arguing the tribe didn’t address the city’s concerns regarding socioeconomic, traffic and other impacts. The city also argued the tribe should mitigate the financial impacts of lost tax revenue should the cardrooms struggle with a new casino built nearby.
In the BIA’s record of decision, Echo Hawk said federal law doesn’t require all impacts be mitigated. In addition, the tribe made mitigation offers, which the city declined to accept, he wrote.
Irish said while the city may not have liked how the environmental concerns were addressed, the record of decision did address them. The concerns don’t rise to the level of a legal appeal, he said.
Whether the council will take any other action has yet to be decided, Irish said.
“Council will look at all of its options and make whatever decision is best for the citizens of La Center,” he said.
Marissa Harshman: 360-735-4546 or marissa.harshman@columbian.com.
