McCain letter prompts sharp response from tribes' MMCT spokesman
U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, entered Connecticut’s third-casino fray this week, asking in a letter that the Department of the Interior refrain from endorsing the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes’ plans for “off-reservation gaming.”
A spokesman for the tribes pointed out errors in the letter, which MGM Resorts representatives distributed Wednesday to Connecticut lawmakers and the state attorney general's office.
MGM, which is building a $950 million resort casino in Springfield, Mass., opposes a bill that would sanction the tribes’ plan to build an East Windsor casino to protect their Connecticut properties — Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun — from the competitive threat MGM Springfield poses.
“I am writing concerning efforts by the Mohegan Tribe and Mashantucket Pequot Tribe (“Tribes”) in Connecticut to open an off-reservation casino near the Connecticut-New York border just a few miles from New York City,” McCain wrote in his letter to Ryan Zinke, the Interior secretary.
“The problem? They couldn’t even get the location for the facility right in Senator McCain’s letter,” Andrew Doba, the tribes’ spokesman, said in a news release.
East Windsor is north of Hartford, far from New York City.
Doba said McCain’s miscue is “ironic because the only people actually talking about opening a casino close to the New York border are MGM. Not that they will actually build a casino in Southwestern Connecticut, but they are talking about it.”
McCain informs Zinke that “the previous Administration” led the tribes to believe that the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees Indian affairs, would approve amendments to the tribes’ gaming compacts with the state to accommodate “off-reservation” gaming “under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.”
The senator’s wrong about that, too, Doba said.
“To make matters worse, the letter confuses Indian gaming with commercial gaming,” he said. “Let’s be clear — MMCT (the tribes’ third-casino partnership) is a commercial entity operated by the two tribes, not ‘off reservation gaming’ as the letter states.”
State Attorney General George Jepsen has said the bill granting the tribes the exclusive right to develop a commercial casino could invite legal challenges. An alternative bill, championed by MGM, would create a competitive-bidding process among casino operators.
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