The county says this means the property was never a Rancheria and should not qualify for a casino under the Interior Department’s 2004 compact on Indian gaming. At this point, Amador County has been waiting almost 2 years for a decision from US District Judge Richard Roberts – if the judge won’t permit the pending case to be expanded to include the new information, the county says it will file a separate lawsuit. The Buena Vista Rancheria Band, headed by Rhonda Morningstar Pope, is proposing The Flying Cloud Casino on 67 acres on Coal Mine Rd near Highway 88. The Las Vegas style casino would include slot machines, gaming tables, a hotel, and a parking structure for up to 4,000 cars. The county says the casino development would create unacceptable increases in traffic, crime and demand for county services.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007 09:01
County Beefs Up Casino Case
Amador County has beefed up its challenge to the
casino development proposed by the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians.
The county has submitted new information to its case pending before a US
District Court Judge – the results of a study commissioned by the county and conducted by Stephan Beckham, an
American Indian scholar and history professor at Lewis and Clark College
in Portland, Oregon. The county claims that there
is no evidence that the Pope-Oliver family claiming tribal connections to the Buena Vista land ever operated as a tribe.
