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Gambling
is not a long-term answer to reservation unemployment; a safer bet
is investing in education
By
Richard Barrett
for Headwaters News
Since the passage of the Indian Gaming Act in 1988, tribes across
the country have turned to the construction and operation of casinos
as engines of reservation economic development.
On reservations with high rates of poverty and unemployment, low
pay, and little prospect of growth from other sources, casinos have
come to be regarded as the last best hope for generating revenue
for tribes and for providing desperately needed jobs for reservation
residents.
Tribes in the Mountain West face particularly daunting economic
conditions, but in their approach to economic development, they
are not alone. Across the region and political spectrum, the belief
that job creation should be a top priority of government is not
confined to tribal development officials, but is, rather, an article
of faith for governors, senators, legislators, county commissioners
– indeed just about anybody in elected office.
And this faith in the importance and value of job creation is not
confined to government. Many organizations, representing a broad
array of such social interests as the arts or the environment, try
to marshal public support by arguing that what they do, or propose
to do, creates jobs – even if job creation is tangential, at
best, to their larger purpose.
This commitment to job creation does not spring from some simple
conviction that bigger is better, but rather the belief that job
growth will result in qualitative improvement in the labor market.
It's a matter of supply and demand: by increasing the demand for
labor, we will raise earnings, lower unemployment rates, and provide
new employment opportunities for workers and their families living
in or close to poverty.
We are all aware of the fact that earnings and income are low, and
poverty rates are high, in much of the Mountain West. Surely that
makes creating new jobs absolutely imperative.
Unfortunately, the economics of local labor markets are not so simple
as all that. To understand how these markets operate, it is important
to understand that local economies are extremely open. That means
that goods, services, capital, labor, technology and the like all
flow in and out of the local economy quite fluidly.
In the labor market, these inflows and outflows have an important
effect: They tend to erode the beneficial impact on labor market conditions
of job creation, and to buffer the detrimental impact of job loss.
The process is straightforward: Suppose the establishment of a casino
raises the demand for labor in the local labor market. Initially,
unemployment rates will fall and wages will rise as growing demand
meets the limitations of the existing supply of labor.
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Tribes
contrast gambling wealth, brutal poverty
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
May 8, 2002
Gambling tends to overshadow other reservation issues,
at least in daily headlines, and one obvious reason is the amount
of money at stake.
The current hot spot is Arizona, where Gov.
Jane Hull's pact with gambling tribes is still being thrashed
by critics and the Legislature. Hull negotiated the agreement after
a federal judge ruled the previous pact illegal. The terms would
continue casino-style gambling on reservations and increase the
number of slot machines allowed at urban casinos, and the 17 tribes
would pay a collective $83 million a year to the state.
Arizona dog and horse racetrack owners lobbied hard to squelch the
deal, fearing the 10-year terms would allow Indian casinos to siphon
off their customers and their profits. Both sides rallied hundreds
of people for a Senate hearing in early April, and the governor
herself testified, in part, to dispute an
ugly ad campaign aimed at her by the racetrack lobby.
In
mid-April, a Senate committee killed the bill in what Hull
said was a cheap parliamentary shot. It was quickly resurrected
and on
Monday, it passed the Senate, although the fight is expected
to continue in the House.
The Coeur d'Alene and Nez Perce tribes in northern Idaho also struck
a deal with their governor only to see it defeated in the Legislature.
Tribal leaders want to clarify a state law on the legality of the
machines that have yielded millions, and they drafted
an initiative for the November ballot that would also allow
expansion of existing operations.
The tribes spent $665,000 from gambling proceeds to launch the petition
drive, and the campaign is expected to cost $4 million to $8 million.
Talks on a gambling pact for Wyoming's Wind River Reservation failed
in April, and the issue is expected to go to court-ordered mediation.
It's a stretch to extrapolate to reservations, but across Montana,
there are signs that the allure
of gambling may have a limit. State officials say gambling revenue
doubled in the past decade but seems to be leveling off. Gambling
machines are limited to establishments with a liquor license, and
state officials said the market is saturated and declining -- a
lesson that may or may not eventually take hold on reservations
across the West.
Other tribes are pushing economic development without gambling revenue.
The Hopi Tribe bought a third
shopping complex in Flagstaff and 18,000 acres of ranchland
in March with a $55 million federal payment. The payment is part
of an agreement that leases traditional Hopi lands for long-term
Navajo residents.
Montana's Blackfeet Tribe has revived
plans to build a luxury resort near the east entrance to Glacier
National Park, a $10 million project considered off and on for 20
years.
But underlying the lure of casino riches is a need
some tribal leaders call desperate. Conditions on some reservations
still resemble Third World countries, and in some aspects, are worse.
Only 48
percent of Montana Indian students who enter high school actually
graduate, according to state figures, and a Blackfeet legislator
said that's mainly an economic problem: Students often go to work
to support their families instead of finishing school.
In Montana, Indian
families are shaped by poverty: They account for 7 percent of
the population but 42 percent of the welfare caseload, and they
are 30 percent larger and 3.5 times more likely to be headed by
a single parent than white families, according to census data.
Some of the 153 Blackfeet Reservation homes built
two decades ago by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
are growing
toxic mold on the walls and mushrooms in the carpet.
A study by the National American Indian Housing Council concluded
that reservation housing
is six times more crowded than the national average, with resulting
health and emotional impacts. And the trend is toward more crowding
in often substandard housing, the study said.
And in a special report, the Arizona Republic found that the death
rates for Native Americans, from tuberculosis, diabetes, alcoholism,
suicide and homicide, are seven
times higher than for other Americans. The federal government
spends half as much per tribal member as it does for health programs
for non-Indians, and the average lifespan for Indians in Arizona
is 55 -- less than in Bangladesh.
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