California's politically powerful Indian casino tribes and the state's major charities have worked out a deal that would allow the charities to expand their bingo operations while preserving the tribes' constitutional monopoly on slot machines.
But the intensely lobbied compromise, which has been privately hammered out in the waning days of the legislative session and wedged into a state Senate bill Monday, appears to leave some small charities, particularly in Sacramento, out in the cold.
The deal would specifically ban charities from operating "electronic bingo" machines, which the tribes claim are slot machines and which have been a bone of legal contention for two decades. In return, the charities could link their games through venues such as simulcasting and offer much bigger prizes.
"The tribes are as sympathetic as anyone else to the plight of the charities," said Doug Elmets, spokesman for the California Tribal Business Alliance, a group of six casino tribes. "They just want to be sure that whatever they (the charities) do is operating within a regulated environment."
But a group of bingo machine operators and smaller charities say the proposal would cripple their fund-raising efforts, because they would have to give up their money-making machines while having no network of sites to link up.
"Mega-organizations like the Catholic Church would do great," said Ravi Mehta, the lead lobbyist for a group calling itself the California Charity Bingo Association. "But small charities, like the United Cerebral Palsy Association of Sacramento County, will be devastated by this."
The bill, SB 1369, is in the Assembly Rules Committee.
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