Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance ran on a platform of “safe streets and trails, good schools, real solutions to homelessness, and a vibrant, affordable city.” Last week, LaFrance abruptly added a new goal for her administration: the promotion of casino gambling.
In a January 3 letter to Assembly members, LaFrance shared her comments to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in support of a proposed Eklutna casino, which would see the deployment of up to 700 Las Vegas-style slot machines in a sprawling complex near Birchwood, a short drive from the Anchorage city center.
LaFrance praised the effects of casino gambling, citing its economic benefits. According to LaFrance, “the project will create shared economic benefits, including more than 450 jobs during construction that will add $45.8 million to our local economy. Once operating, the project will support 419 workers and generate $67.6 million in economic value. Positive economic spill-over effects would boost surrounding businesses, hotels, and workers.”
“We’d like to formally share our support for the Native Village of Eklutna as it exercises its sovereignty and pursues economic development,” LaFrance wrote.
On February 1, Interior Department Solicitor Robert Anderson reversed decades of precedent and unilaterally declared that casinos could be operated on Native allotment land. According to an October 3 article in World Casino News, the Native Village of Eklutna quickly partnered with Marnell, a major Las Vegas-based casino operator, to build a casino in Anchorage. Last fall, Eklutna began clearing land at the planned casino site.
An advertisement for Class II slot machines. Class II slot machines, the type of machine that Eklutna plans to install in its casino, are virtually indistinguishable from the Class III machines found throughout Las Vegas.
LaFrance’s letter makes no reference to any downsides of opening a casino in Alaska’s largest population center. Numerous studies and meta-analyses link gambling to increased rates of suicide, domestic violence, bankruptcy, depression, and many types of violent and white-collar crime. Those impacts disproportionately affect lower-income and minority individuals and families, studies show.
A nationwide increase in gambling and gambling disorders has caused public health experts to sound the alarm, with many describing it as a nationwide public health crisis or epidemic.
Under current laws, the casino would likely pay no taxes from revenues to the city. Individuals familiar with Eklutna’s plans told the Landmine that Eklutna will likely request that taxpayers fund millions of dollars of roadways and other major infrastructure work required by the casino. Eklutna will also likely request that the Anchorage Assembly grant it policing powers, so that an Eklutna police force can independently enforce laws and detain individuals in and around the casino, sources said.
Disgusting, but what you expect, Anchorage? You reap, you sow.
Alaska has always had a libertarian bent (see Ravin vs the State of Alaska 1975). So seems to me Anchorage’s new “progressive” mayor is a classic Alaskan. This is a concern? Our “progressive” Governor is pro-gambling also
Am not saying we should not have legal gambling and prostitution, but if we are going to have legal alcohol then we can’t actually claim we care about the people?
So which is it…LaFrance is a libertarian? Dunleavy is a progressive? We should ban alcohol sales in Anchorage because of the harm it does? And create another black-market industry?
Alaska was libertarian when libertarianism was cool, however, that ship has saled and many libertarians have morphed into populist conservatives. Libertarianism is now considered cringe by many..
We fucking tried to warn you all that Suzanne LaFrance was out of her depth and had no idea what she was doing. Unmentioned in this article is that Aaron Leggett, pres of Eklutna, was a huge part of Suzanne’s campaign. He is in many of her photos. Suzanne will reward her friends and supporters just as much as anyone, even if that means exploiting the city’s poor. Suzanne’s legacy in this city will be tent cities and gambling addiction. I’m gonna say it again for you libs in the back: we tried to warn you. You didn’t listen. Oh… Read more »
↑ This right here. Suzanne will jump however high Aaron tells her to, while dragging her feet endlessly on everything else. You all keep thinking socalled progressives care about people, when really what they care about is the appearance of moral virtue.
On the positive side, maybe some dumb tourists will gamble their retirements away here and a few bucks will cycle back around the state. At least it’s something
Yup, our “”progressive”” mayor Suzanne cares more about pushing her friend’s casino than she does about solving homelessness. Called that from a mile away.
So how much would it cost the tax payers of Anchorage to “solve” homelessness? $1 billion? Initial cost: then $200 million every year there after? With funds generated from taxes on gambling?
What taxes on gambling are you referring to exactly? Is the Eklutna tribe going to solve homelessness for Anchorage; or is Anchorage going to generate taxes from gambling (and where is THAT story?!?)
Exactly my point
You want the Mayor to solve homelessness without fiscal note?
You cannot SOLVE the homelessness problem with money allocations like we have spent. We tried that here in Anchorage for the last 15 years. Sorry if you’re in Florida and weren’t paying attention. See, the people who want help are already housed. Sober, law-abiding. On a track. We paid that. Most of us accept that. The other miscreants, however, are refusing to stop being purposefully homeless. Pooping in our arks, creating wildland fires in our community, stealing. These people are the ones costing us the most money. Until it becomes and enforced crime, that will not change. And THAT takes… Read more »
It costs ~100 k a year to house a prisoner. 2600 homeless and growing is $260 million a year. What is the capacity? ie On top of that $ 1/4 billion a year what is the additional cost in new beds? How many new homeless are there a year? ~200. So add $20 million a year to your budget. So what is your fiscal note and who will pay for it?
The Alaska DOC currently has a “prison farm” out at Point McKenzie. Build barracks. Put the homeless to work shoveling snow or farming plots. The most terrifying monster these homeless people can possibly confront is manual labor, Take their PFD away and put them to work, and this crap will end faster than you can possibly imagine.
You think folks without a mailing address get the PFD? oy
You think you can force folks to work? ha….cause if they fail to work you are going to do what? throw them out onto the streets?
Building barracks….who will pay for that? how much will it cost?
Who will pay the ~100 k a year per additional prisoner yearly cost?
It great fun to have magical solutions to homelessness…but there is always a heavy fiscal note and without a true fiscal note it is not an actual plan.
Yes, they get PFDs, no you can’t force somebody to work. Ever been to jail? if you don’t work, you sit in your cell. Eventually, you work. You also want out. ()go ahead…….ask me how I know). The point is to get them off your streets, and make them want to go to another, warmer city…….the ones that coddle them……..like the liberals in Anchorage want you to do. The state builds the barracks because the state operates the DOC. Barracks are cheaper than schools, and cheaper than medium security prisons. Goose Creek prison costed less than one year’s PFD appropriation,… Read more »
Floridawoman IS Meg Zelatel.
Look, if we’re talkin freedom, then let em build the dang casino. This is about a tribe wanting to do what’s best for their people, and no one else should be buttin’ in. Every community, whether it’s a tribe or not, has the right to take care of their own business. If they wanna set up a casino and create jobs, that’s their call, not some outsider’s. This is America, right? We talk about liberty, so don’t start tellin folks what they can or can’t do with their land or their future. If folks wanna gamble, that’s their business and… Read more »
Libertarianism is a terrible ideology.
Classic libertarianism is the American dream that built this country. It is the hippy movement of the late 1960s and the 1970s. It is the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the feminist movement of the 1970s. It is , literally, “Little House on the Prairie.” I have no idea why you think ” libertarians ” have anything to do with this discussion, but denouncing casinos is the opposite of libertarian.
lol at the idea that Anchorage residents are “outsiders” in their own city. This idea that Eklutna can do no wrong is exactly the kind of left-wing self-hating stupidity that has ruined liberal cities up and down the West Coast. Thing is, Eklutna doesn’t want to mind “their own business,” they and Marnell Gaming want to get rich exploiting people. The people pushing this casino are money-hungry sociopaths, not role models.
“that’s their business” is the kind of thing someone says if they have zero experience of living with someone with gambling addiction. I’m telling you this kind of gambling becomes everyones business very quickly whether you want it to or not.
Tribal Sovereignty is a nightmare for Alaska (and for Alaskan “tribes”) but it’s not tge MoA’s call. Period. So the choice is try to be a good neighbor or waste energy pissing up a rope. LaFrance may be a clueless nonce, but there is nothing to be gained by pulling a Dunleavy over this
The mayor could have left her mouth shut on this, then. But she didn’t, she supports the casino and her comment does carry weight. What she is probably doing is setting the stage for the MoA to spend millions on infrastructure to support he casino. She will probably also support giving policing powers to the tribe so that Alaskans can be arrested and jailed by private police who answer to Leggett rather than to the muni.
Sort of amusing but also sad watching Anchorage destroy itself. Moved away 12 years ago. Zero regrets.
Thank you for this. The type of gambling that your mayor and Eklutna are pushing is associated with dramatic increases in suicidality and mental illness, especially for young people who are more motivated by peer behavior and have not yet developed psychological defenses against the manipulative techniques deployed by casino operators. States that legalized sports betting have seen massive increases in calls to gambling addiction hotlines, and a very high percentage of those callers report suicidal ideation or suicide attempts. Gambling is also strongly associated with other problems in young demographics, including substance abuse, domestic violence, and dropout rates.Marnell is… Read more »
Absolutely. This and the three comments under it say it all. Eklutna Village is the largest private landowner in the municipality. Instead of trying to, oh I don’t know, create an income stream for their shareholders by helping solve the housing crisis, they have chosen to use their land and sovereignty to contribute to a disproportionately tragic problem for their own people. This is so unwise, and the mayor jumping on this bandwagon demonstrates her own lack of discernment. “As for problem gambling (4+ symptoms in the past year), 18.2% of Native Americans are classified as problem gamblers which is… Read more »
My understanding is that (at least to start) is that there will be no card tables, no roulette, etc. It’s all electronic gaming. Secondly, the location looks like it’s in the middle of a housing subdivision, which has the neighbors pretty exercised. It looks like a classic Alaskan fubar.
So mayor LaFrance wants to support the Anchorage economy via slot machines, fed by local gamblers, that pay out to a Las Vegas casino company and a tribe that pays no taxes. This is the dumbest damn thing I’ve ever read. It’s like someone trying to power a sailboat by blowing on the sail. Incomprehensible stupidity.
This is what makes no sense. LaFrance will be forcing Anchorage taxpayers to cover many of the costs of development, but we gain nothing in taxes once the casino is built, profits are taken out of state, and Anchorage and those very same taxpayers are forced to deal with the negative externalities like poverty, addiction, etc. While i don’t necessarily have a problem with a “sovereign” entity building a casino, the municipality and its tax payers don’t have any reason to support it. Perhaps a better use of taxpayer dollars would be funding busses to bring people back to tribal… Read more »
ALM……The guest at your pool party who pisses in the pool, and then complains about the other guests who are pissing in the pool.
You should pitch this to the Lassie from Tallahassee, it reads like some of her screed.
The “sovereignty” law that allows a tribe to build a casino is that it needs to be on RESERVATIONS. ANSCA 1971attempted to prevent Alaska from experiencing the Reservation problems of the lower 48;did away with all reservations in Alaska except in metlakatla and for this the tribes were well compensated.last yes Department of interior ruling goes against congressional intent so I think xpect it to be litigated before the issue is completely resolved. As anchorage is struggling to close its budget and is bumping up against its property tax cap. It should not be taking on significant unfounded madates that… Read more »
Gambling is a voluntary tax on stupidity.
What hypocrites. Landmine criticizes the Native Village of Eklutna for promoting economic development but at the same time sells banner ads for Shungnak to promote economic development
“economic development” is a nice euphemism for “Las Vegas casino that will drive thousands of their neighbors into suicide, economic desperation, and homelessness.” Is Eklutna really so completely out of ideas that the only thing they can think of to make money is a fukkin casino? Anyone who has lived anywhere near one of these operations can tell you how bad they are and how many lives they screw up.
Exactly what Anchorage needs: a tax on poor people through gambling. Suggestion: Alaskans be banned from gambling. Only for Outsiders..
There’s more than one piece of land locally that can be used for this purpose
Remember those Western Sky tribal payday loan ads you saw on TV during the recession? The interest rates on those loans were 700% or more and they got away with it because there’s no cap on interest rates federally. Likewise, there’s no house-edge cap on slot machines. What does Marnell need to do for people to extrapolate his end goals? Turn beet red, sprout horns and fly around on leathery wings?
Trade the Egan Center for the Eklutna Land and put the tribes casino in downtown Anchorage where it will benefit everyone. Who wants without a traffic jam in a residenbtial neighborhood?
Eklutna wants to keep the casino right where it is so they can pay no taxes and ship all the problems back to Anchorage. This is about making $$ and have other people clean up their mess.
These comments just underscore the current of anti-Native bias in this community. I would offer that alcohol has had an outsized negative impact on the Native community, but I see no sentiment that we should close all of the liquor stores.
If the Eklutna Trube wants to explore this as a business opportunity, who are we to get in the way ? We’ve been fucking over the original people on this land for decades, and now when they want to assert themselves, the dominant culture pisses and moans about it.
Get real, people.
The scale of irony of a news outlet that romanticizes trips to Vegas and alcohol consumption and goes off on NIMBYies speaking out about the “ills” of an Alaskan Native community run gambling business in Anchorage, to coin a phrase, is pretty darn LOOse!
Let Eklutna build their darned casino, and give the North Slope Borough or ASRC control of the next ANWR lease sale. Let’s support greater AK Native self-determination everywhere.
Oooh! Wait! If you give ASRC control of the next oil lease, would that mean that Jim Bob wouldn’t get PFD bennies out of it?
Asking for a friend………….
What’s the difference between a federally recognized tribal entity, an Alaska Native Corporation and a first class borough ? Asking for a friend 😘
A federally recognized tribal entity is an indigenous tribe with a nation-to-nation relationship with the U.S. government. An Alaska Native Corporation, created to ensure that Alaska Natives were not organized like federally recognized tribes, is a corporate entity with limited shareholder participation created to administer the land and financial claims settled with the U.S. government and the assets and returns that built up (or were lost) afterwards. A first class borough is a county equivalent administrative division within the state of Alaska, or a type of municipality or a subdivision of a city in Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York,… Read more »
Nice job. So what would be the equivalent of the Native Village of Eklutna ? NSB or ASRC ?
Neither. It would be the equivalent of the villages of Tanana or Huslia, neither of which sport casinos.
What about the Native Village of Barrow or Nuiqsit ?
Those would be great places for casinos.
But not Eklutna ?
Nope.
I love it when a bunch of washashore’s try to tell the folks who were living here first, how to run their lives. I’ll bet that you and Jeff and Paxton don’t remember when Mafia Mike ran for Mayor of Anchorage on the platform of turning the then over-budget and behind-schedule half finished PAC into a casino. Or how about the private lottery owned by the Sullivan family, the one that was shut down by Wally Hickel on the first day he became Governor in 1990 ? Remember that one ? Or how about when the public broadcasting people wanted… Read more »
Thanks for your thoughtful comment! So you’ll be volunteering to help the families that become homeless due to gambling addictions, right? You’ll be doing a community patrol to control the crime that spills out of these casinos, right? I assume you’ll also be first to show up to help out a grieving family who has lost a loved one due to gambling-induced suicide, too. And I’m sure you’ll be rolling up your sleeves to help the casino upgrade the roads, yeah? Thanks! /s
Face it, you’re not advocating for Native interests… you’re just a shill for the Marnell family’s casino.
“………You’ll be doing a community patrol to control the crime that spills out of these casinos, right?………”
Absolutely not, because Anchorage has a real, live police department, even if it’s under the political control of morons. But you can bet that I will be continuing my lifelong campaign for a Mat-Su Borough Sheriff, elected by the people, which has as much a chance of success as a snowball in Hell, because the corrupt Alaska political system cannot survive elected law enforcement.
“Washashore”? LOL! I wish I could tell you my history with the players and locations, but I can’t. No way. I’ll let this play out and watch from the safety of the balcony because I’m not stupid, and frankly, I could care less about noisy, flashy electronic one-armed bandits. I’m even too smart to live in the Muni of Anchorage, having moved back to the Valley 40+ years ago………and now sadly watching Anchorage now moving out here as cultural refugees while the San Francisco/Seattle liberal class destroys the place even worse than it was half a century ago. I even… Read more »
More fuel to the fire of an already addicted state. More homeless, more crime but they’ll keep jacking up our property taxes to pay for it all.
Too bad it is not going to have blackjack. I would be able to take that place’s cash and have a part time job doing it.
And when they 86’s me for legally winning, I would sue based on the Alaska Constitution and get paid again.
I spent the 15 days that the BIA allotted for people to comment on the environmental assessment (AE), (which NORMALLY public comment time frames are a minimum of 30 days. But, NVE and BIA wanted to make sure very few people would have time to read and comment on the 137 page document, plus hundreds of pages of appendices, from December 22 until January 6, a double holiday). They were hoping no one would notice all of the glaring problems with the EA, such as the 50′ setback from the river as required by law, not the 25′ setback they… Read more »
Preach. https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/gambling