Assembly Standing Committee on Governmental Organization

Good afternoon. We'll go ahead and get started with the The Assembly Governmental Organization Committee. It's now called to order. I'm Assembly Member Blanca Rubio, Chair of the Assembly Committee on Governmental Organization. I would like to take. Oops. Oops. Thank you. I'm Assembly Member Blanca Rubio, Chair of the Assembly Committee on Governmental Organizations.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to today's informational hearing. The Tribal State Gaming Compact before us today were executed between Governor Newsom on behalf of the State of California and the Big Sandy Rancheria of Western Mono Indians. Today we will hear from the principal architects of the compact, the governor's office and the tribe.

This negotiated compact was the culmination of a lengthy negotiation process, compromises and careful consideration of requirements under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. This compact reflects the governor's and tribe's mutual commitment to a respectful government to government relationship, promoting tribal economic development and self sufficiency and. And a strong tribal government.

I am pleased to see that the compact mirrors many of the recent compacts that have come before this Committee in the area of regulatory oversight, patron protections, labor and health and safety standards. I just want to remind all interested parties that no formal vote will be taken today.

Today's hearing is for this Committee to be briefed on the contents of the compact as it cannot be amended by the Legislature. SB49 by Senator Grove is the ratification Bill for this compact. At the. And at some point we will be taken up for consideration by the entire body of the Assembly floor. On the Assembly floor.

I would like to thank our witnesses in advance for taking time out of their busy schedules to be with us today. I want to welcome Matthew Lee, senior advisor for tribal negotiations for Governor Newsom. Mr. Lee, let's begin first with the third amendment to the Tribal State Compact between the state and the tribe. Thank you.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, honorable Members, for having me here today. The three things you have in front of you, two of them are amendments to an existing 1999 gaming compact.

The reason for those amendments, and this will make a little bit more sense in context in just a moment, but those extend the expiration of that existing 99 gaming compact.

What happened here is that we ran out of time because of some action that the Federal Department of the Interior took to have a new compact fully in place before that 99 compact otherwise would have expired.

So the goal of those two amendments is to extend the existing compact and maintain that status quo through, I believe, July 1st of this year.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you for that. The information on the amendments and if we can go ahead and talk about the actual compact between the state and the tribe.

Absolutely. The I think key top line on this compact is that it is substantially identical to a compact that this body has seen before. What happened here is that after the state and Big Sandy were able to negotiate a tribal state gaming compact last year, that gaming compact was ultimately disapproved by the Federal Department of the Interior.

That happened in the context of a long running disagreement between the state and the Department of the Interior about the scope of the state's tribal state gaming compacts.

I am pleased to say that in a context last year where Interior had at one point threatened to disapprove all seven of our pending compacts, six of those compacts were ultimately allowed to take effect. Unfortunately, this seventh compact, Big Sandy, was ultimately disapproved.

In its disapproval letter, the Interior Department did make clear that it would have approved or at least allowed the compact to take effect if two things had been different. And fortunately, both of those things were already reflected elsewhere in state law, but not within the four corners of the compact.

One was certain CEQA exemptions that are now in the four corners of the compact. And the other is a guarantee of exclusivity over certain forms of gaming that tribal governments are already guaranteed as a matter of California State law.

So what we've done here is we have taken the compact that this body had previously seen, we have put those two items within the four corners of the compact to address Interior's stated basis for disapproval, and we believe that will solve the problem.

Just to sort of recap, the other terms of the compact, which have not been changed exactly as the chair mentioned, contains our standard protections for workers, including a tribal labor relations ordinance, minimum wage terms, things like that.

There is revenue sharing with something called the Revenue Sharing Trust Fund that redistributes gaming revenue to limited gaming and non gaming tribes, that is to other tribal governments. There is a mechanism for the state to recover its regulatory expenses. There are distributions to local governments.

All of these are standard terms that you will see in many of our compacts. This is a 3,000 device compact that would allow gaming at up to two facilities.

One of those facilities could be on the Mccabe allotment, which is an allotment that the Federal Government concluded within the past several years was eligible for gaming closer to the City of Fresno than the tribe's existing reservation.

Thank you. Any questions? Okay, we'll go ahead and move on to Ms. Elizabeth Hutchins, Chairperson of Big Sandy Rancheria of Western Mono Indians of California. And I believe she is on Zoom. I saw her a little while ago. Ah, there you are.

Yes, welcome. I'm here. Thank you. You can hear me okay? Yeah. Okay, wonderful. First off, thank you so much, Chairwoman Rubio and of course Members of the Committee. As mentioned, I'm Elizabeth Hutchins was formerly known as Kipp, but I have changed my name to Hutchins these days and I am the Chairwoman here at Big Sandy Rancheria.

But first of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony and support of SB49, which of course was authored by Senator Shannon Grove. Our tribe is located just outside of Fresno in the town of Aubrey, California.

And we have trust land here on the rancheria as well as additional land just east of Fresno. We are very deeply rooted here in the Sierra Nevada region. And of course we remain very dedicated to preserving our language, our culture, our traditions, but also pursuing meaningful economic economic development through gaming and inter tribal commerce.

SB 49 ratifies a new tribal state gaming compact that is very essential to the long term success of our tribe. This compact provides the legal foundation for our continued gaming operation, promotes our future growth and of course ensures what we can deliver essential programs and services to our Members.

We're very proud of our long standing partnership, of course, with Fresno county and the Sheriff's office. And under the new compact, we've established an impact Mitigation Fund to support local law enforcement, emergency services and neighboring jurisdictions. This will also ensure that they continue to have the resources to support their community.

We sincerely thank Senator Grove and her staff and the Committee staff for their work and collaboration in advancing this important legislation. And once again, thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Any questions from the Committee? Okay. Seeing none. We'll move on to public comment. Any Members of the public that wish to speak. Okay. Hearing none. I think we are. We will conclude. Thank you for your testimony and thank you for the presentation. And we look forward to seeing this at a later date. Okay. And with that, I will go ahead and adjourn.