Eldorado gets one state closer; Banditry in Arizona

Check Louisiana off the list of states giving the thumbs-up to the Eldorado Resorts takeover of Caesars Entertainment. CEO Tom Reeg had to assure regulators that the company would invest $500 million (there goes that highly touted half-billion cost savings) in the Pelican State if approved. That includes redoing all-but-defunct Belle of Baton Rouge “a venue so decrepit the gaming boss wouldn’t even stay there during his recent visit,” reports Casino.org. We’re glad of anything that lights a fire under Reeg to upgrade that casino, which generates negligible revenue.

* A gaggle of dirty tricksters in the Arizona Lege are trying to hold tribal gaming compacts hostage in return for expedited settlement of water-rights issues. “This state may not enter into, negotiate, execute, extend or renew any tribal-state gaming compact with a tribe that is a party to litigation regarding water rights in which this state is an adverse party,” states the bill. It would run a cart and horses through Gov. Doug Ducey‘s ongoing compact negotiation with the state’s gaming tribes, a process Ducey describes as “close” to resolution. In his State of the State address, Ducey promised a compact “that is regulated, safe and limited, and that preserves the culture of our state.”

That’s not good enough for a cabal of legislators who are salivating at the prospect of using potential compact revocation as a club to beat tribes into submission on water rights. “If the tribes don’t have the impetus to adjudicate water rights, we’ll bring them to the table some other way,” gloated state Rep. Mark Finchem (R, pictured). Added state Rep. Steve Pierce (R) patronizingly, “You’re probably right if [tribes] are upset, but it’s to help them, too. The sooner they get things resolved, the bills from the lawyers offices go down.” Responded state Sen. Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai (D), an enrolled Navajo, tribes “are going to consider it an attack on their very existence. And it really is.” Finchem has also floated a water-for-taxes swap that would extort higher revenue-sharing payments in return for H2O rights. (It has not escaped our notice that the leaders of this nefarious scheme are almost all white males.)

The GOP caucus may be looking at the issue through an over-simplified filter. Or so Kyl Center for Walter Policy Director Sarah Porter suggests. Allowing that, with an influx of new Arizonans, water issues need to be settled sooner rather than later, she added, “It is not really in the tribes’ power to settle. They could deeply desire to settle but there are lots of other parties and entities that have to participate.”

Let’s hope Ducey prevails and the Native American-bashers in the Lege are put in their place.

* Eminem‘s latest shock tactic has been to recreate the Mandalay Bay Massacre in a new music video. Rather than give Mr. Mathers the airtime he so desperately craves, I’ll let the Twitterverse light him up.

Jottings: In the wake of “Megixt,” Sherwood Valley Rancheria, in California, is offering jobs to Prince Harry Windsor and wife Meghan Markle. The casino—which would fit in your back pocket—swears it’s not a publicity stunt … Government employees in Osaka are being barred from having contact with casino companies, a response to the graft scandal currently sweeping Japan and depressing shares of scofflaw 500.com … Bad Penn National! Its eponymous racino in Pennsylvania has been fined $20,000 for holding unauthorized poker tournaments … Melco Resorts & Entertainment has been building a $1.5 billion resort on the Sydney waterfront. New South Wales regulators are only now getting ’round to a probity exam. Melco will probably pass muster but shouldn’t this have been done sooner? … Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small (D) is ramping up the pressure on Carl Icahn to tear down civic “embarrassment” Trump Plaza. Icahn’s passivity is strange, in that the real estate would be undoubtedly more valuable with the Trump eyesore removed.