We TOLD You So: Revenue Sharing in Doubt

I know we told you that the revenue sharing payments could go away. If they go to the general fund, they are subject to budgetary constraints.

Article

New compacts clouding tribal payout picture
By James P. SweeneyCOPLEY NEWS SERVICE
March 3, 2008

SACRAMENTO – Some powerful California Indian tribes dismissed it as what one leader referred to as a “blatant lie” – the warning that their new gambling agreements could jeopardize revenue-sharing payments to the state's poorest tribes.
But a jumble of conflicting provisions in tribal-state compacts, as well as state law, suggest the claim raised during the recent ballot fight over the deals is at least an open question.
What appears almost certain, critics say, is that the compacts will subject funding for the $1.1 million annual payments to poorer tribes to the perilous grind of the state budget process.
“We were not lying about his,” said Nelson Pinola, chairman of the Manchester-Point Arena band of Mendocino County. “This issue has so polarized tribes in California, between the haves and have-nots, that it's going to be hard to repair.”
Pinola, a retired Sonoma County sheriff's lieutenant and budget analyst, raised the point in television ads that opposed the new compacts for Sycuan of El Cajon, Pechanga of Temecula, Morongo of Banning and Agua Caliente of Palm Springs.

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