Cedric says Deval's "all sewed up"
Governor Deval Patrick said the state casino law does not say Massachusetts has to have 3 casinos. Course Cedric Tobey Cromwell said that made things good for the Mashpee. Well now that’s not for him to decide. That’s for the Gaming Commission to decide. First they’ll determine whether the tribe will actually get land into trust and if a Mashpee commercial casino in Taunton will generate enough money worthy of a license. If it fails to meet that criteria, the license will be given to another bidder.
Now that the Taunton City Counselors have approved the IGA it doesn’t matter whether Taunton voters vote the agreement up or down on June 9. So you really have to wonder what happened to that $500 K Brook Scannell was playing around with. Never has there been so much negative press generated for so much moola. Lovely isn’t it. She paid someone pretty good to work those Taunton counselors over for their votes.
Cedric says that the deal for a compact will be done with Deval in a couple of weeks. Wonder if the Governor knows Cedric’s bragging that he’s got him and his beleaguered Gaming Commission all sewed up—as if they don’t have enough magnifying glasses burning them up. Wow, we didn’t know Cedric and the Governor were so tight. Rumors abound about…
So its back to LIT. The ghetto management style is unreal. The Nashville office said “ they’re really trying to rush this through, there’s no guarantee of anything.” He also said the application can’t be considered if there are liens or taxes owed on the property. Well of course taxes are owed on Tribal property. Cedric does not want to pay them. If the land is not in trust, it’s on the tax rolls. The BIA official says there can be no waivers or stays. The taxes have to be paid. The application is just as incomplete as it was when the BIA rejected it in January (and Cedric forgot to tell us). The Mashpee portion that was 95% complete when the previous administration left office and Cromwell has never finished it 3 1/2 years later. It is impossible to prove the Taunton portion for the casino because there are no ancient links to the Mashpee. That is unless that tribal brother and sister team sprinkle some of those bones they been collecting (illegally) around the site. You know it’s crossed their minds if they haven’t done it already.
So are we to believe that Judy Shapiro and Ramona Peters can do the Taunton paperwork in a month and a half when it took a team of experts years to do Middleboro to the satisfaction of the BIA? Then there’s the little problem with the Congress that would have to fix the law to allow the tribe to take LIT. That will not happen with the Republican House.
And wait till they get a load of the tribal books. That’s mandatory, plus paying off all debt. If you think the AMEX card scandal was bad…just wait. It only gets better.
