Feinstein renews opposition to Bay Indian casino

WASHINGTON - Sen. Dianne Feinstein reintroduced legislation Monday to block a tribal casino from being built across the bay from San Francisco on land that's not part of an Indian reservation.

"I have serious concerns about the expansion of Nevada-style gaming - with its slot machines and in-house banking - into urban areas," Feinstein said in a statement. "This legislation is designed to prevent the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians from short-circuiting the process laid out in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act for gaming on newly acquired lands."

An identical bill never got a hearing before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee during the last congressional session.

But the committee has a new chairman, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and his spokeswoman said Feinstein's bill would likely come up during a planned hearing on the issue of tribes building casinos away from their traditional reservations.

"From what we know right now that would fall under off-reservation Indian gaming, so it would fall under that hearing," said McCain spokeswoman Andrea Jones.

The Lytton Band of Pomo Indians got the right to build the casino on the site of a San Pablo card room because of language inserted in a 2000 spending bill by Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, that gave the land special federal trust status. Without Miller's intervention, the tribe would have had to go through a lengthy process of getting federal and state approval.

Feinstein's bill would revoke the special trust status and require the tribe to go through the normal approval process, which can take years.

Tribal spokesman Doug Elmets said Feinstein's bill was unfair to people in the community who support the tribe, and to the tribe itself.

"They had their land illegally taken from them by the federal government, and now that the government has finally acted to redress that wrong, Sen. Feinstein wants to take it away again," Elmets said.