{"id":162721,"date":"2026-07-23T07:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T07:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/162721\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T07:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T07:02:14","slug":"california-cashes-out-empty-handed-in-gavin-newsoms-tribal-casino-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/162721\/","title":{"rendered":"California cashes out empty-handed in Gavin Newsom’s tribal casino deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed away California\u2019s share of future tribal casino revenue<\/a> in a new 25-year gaming compact with the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe \u2014 a move critics have blasted as a giveaway. <\/p>\n

The agreement, which was signed Monday, authorizes the tribe to operate up to two casinos with as many as 1,200 slot machines and other Las Vegas-style games<\/a> on eligible trust land in San Bernardino County. <\/p>\n

Unlike the tribe\u2019s previous gaming compact, however, the new deal no longer requires Fort Mojave to share a percentage of casino revenue with California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom cut a deal with the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe. Carlin Stiehl for CA Post<\/p>\n

The Fort Mojave tribe is located on the borders of California, Arizona and Nevada. Facebook\/Mojave Tribe<\/p>\n

Instead, the tribe will primarily reimburse the state\u2019s regulatory costs and \u2014 if it operates more than 350 gaming devices \u2014 contribute 0.5% of its net win to a local impact mitigation fund.<\/p>\n

Kyle Kirkland, president of the California Gaming Association and owner of Club One Casino in Fresno, said the compact continues a decades-long shift away from requiring tribes to share gaming revenue with the state.<\/p>\n

Kyle Kirkland accused the state of giving away billions in revenue to tribal casinos. Instagram\/@kirklandforca20<\/p>\n

\u201cMy card room pays $1 million annually to the city of Fresno,\u201d Kirkland said, noting three tribal casinos operate within about an hour of his business but pay no state taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was sold to the California public is very different from what is happening today. It is a scam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Newsom\u2019s office nor the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe responded to The Post\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Tribal casinos generated a record $46.2 billion in gross gaming revenue last year, according to a report by Casino.org<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Earlier this month, The Post found that a five-member\u00a0Northern California tribe\u00a0had received tens of millions of dollars in federal and state funding despite years of allegations<\/a> from its own members that tribal leaders were exploiting its sovereign status.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the California Morning Report newsletter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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A Newsom-backed\u00a0state commission also approved the transfer of a popular Mendocino County beach<\/a> to three Indigenous tribes.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s new compact marks a significant departure from the tribe\u2019s 2004 gaming agreement negotiated under then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. <\/p>\n

That compact authorized up to 1,500 gaming devices and required Fort Mojave to make escalating payments tied to the number of slot machines in operation. Those payments included contributions to California\u2019s Revenue Sharing Trust Fund, which helps support tribes with little or no casino gaming, along with additional payments based on gaming revenue.<\/p>\n

Newsom has come to multiple agreements with native tribes this month. Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The new compact scraps those revenue-sharing provisions. Fort Mojave will no longer make payments into either the Revenue Sharing Trust Fund or the Tribal Nation Grant Fund, limiting its financial obligations largely to regulatory cost reimbursements and local impact mitigation payments required under the agreement.<\/p>\n

The change reflects a dramatically different legal landscape following the Ninth Circuit\u2019s 2010 decision in Rincon Band of Luise\u00f1o Mission Indians v. Schwarzenegger. <\/p>\n

The court ruled California could not require tribes to make general revenue-sharing payments simply for the right to operate casinos because those payments amounted to an unlawful tax under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Fort Mojave tribe currently operates the Avi Resort & Casino. Avi Resort & Casino<\/p>\n

Financial obligations must be tied to legitimate regulatory costs, mitigation payments or other permissible consideration.<\/p>\n

The ruling sharply reduced California\u2019s leverage in compact negotiations, and more recent agreements have largely abandoned the broad revenue-sharing formulas common in earlier compacts.<\/p>\n

Still, critics argue the decision did not prevent the state from negotiating stronger financial terms in exchange for valuable gaming rights.<\/p>\n

Kirkland said his card room in Fresno is hit with taxes while neighboring tribal casinos pay nothing. Instagram\/@kirklandforca20<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the California Morning Report newsletter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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\u201c[California] is actually giving up billions annually,\u201d Kirkland said. \u201cIn the short run, in any other state they would be giving up to 10% to 50% of slot revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the new agreement, Fort Mojave may operate one casino on its existing California trust lands and potentially build a second casino on additional land near Needles \u2014 if the property is taken into trust by the federal government and receives the required approvals.<\/p>\n

Avi Resort & Casino in Laughlin, Nevada. Avi Resort & Casino<\/p>\n

The tribe, whose reservation spans California, Arizona and Nevada along the Colorado River, already operates the Avi Resort & Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, and Spirit Mountain Casino in Arizona. The California compact would allow it to expand its gaming operations into California for the first time.<\/p>\n

The compact still requires ratification by the state Legislature, approval by the U.S. Department of the Interior and publication in the Federal Register before taking effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed away California\u2019s share of future tribal casino revenue in a new 25-year gaming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[147],"tags":[544,75221,542,33256,51,48],"class_list":["post-162721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gavin-newsom","tag-california","tag-casinos","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-native-americans","tag-politics","tag-us-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116968013345311159","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}