Amador County – Amador County disclosed Thursday that it has spent $2 million on legal costs related to the Buena Vista Band of Me-Wuk Indians’ proposed casino, though $1.2 million was spent to protect the county from possible impacts of a renegotiated state compact.

The Amador County Board of Supervisors released records to the Buena Vista Band of Me-Wuk Indians Thursday in answer to an open-records act request. The County said the Tribe sought “records identifying expenditures of County Funds from Jan. 1, 2005 through August 2011, related to the Tribe’s proposed casino project.” The County “compiled a significant number of pages of redacted billing records depicting those expenditures.”

As of Thursday, April 26, the County made the records available to the Tribe to be picked up and wanted to share the information “directly with the public through local media outlets, and to provide some further context for those expenditures that the redacted bills will not provide.”

In the 6 years and 8 months up to August 2011, the County “paid outside attorneys and consultants” just over $2 million “in relation to the Tribe’s proposed casino project.” The County noted that a county-wide electoral advisory ballot said almost 85 percent of voters opposed another casino in Amador County, and in 2005 the County “initiated affirmative litigation in Washington D.C. against the Secretary of the Interior.”

Since then the County has continued the litigation, but noted the “majority of the costs the County has incurred through August 2011 are not the result” of the D.C. litigation, but are the result of “requirements triggered by the 2004 Amended Compact between the Tribe and the State of California.”

The Amended Compact “provided for additional gaming devices at the proposed casino and increased revenue to the State” and it “also required the Tribe to prepare a Tribal Environmental Impact Report evaluating the offsite impacts of the proposed casino and to negotiate an Intergovernmental Services Agreement with the County that adequately provided for the mitigation of impacts of the proposed casino project.”

The County said that “if a negotiated Intergovernmental Services Agreement could not be reached, either party could trigger binding arbitration. Although the Amended Compact did not require the County to participate, the County had to engage in that process in order to best protect the citizens of Amador County from the impacts of the proposed casino project in the event it was allowed to go forward.” The County spent $1.2 million on it between 2005 and the arbitration award in 2008.

The County said it continues to hold the “position that the negative impacts of additional casinos to the County and its residents will always exceed any and all of the purported benefits and mitigations.” The County also “remains committed to opposing additional casinos in Amador County and will expend the funds necessary to do so.”

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.