01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, December 13, 2006

By Katie Mulvaney

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — In their first face-to-face meeting since the Narragansett Indian tribe’s stinging casino defeat, Governor Carcieri yesterday urged Narragansett Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas to accept money from Lincoln Park.

The tribe is owed $392,547 under a deal legislators struck last year that gave the Narragansetts 5 percent of all revenue generated by new slot machines at the greyhound track. That money could be put toward economic development, the governor said.

“From my perspective, I would like to see the tribe prosper,” Carcieri said after the more than an hour sit-down at the State House.

But Thomas expressed reservations about the language in the law that sealed that deal. He said he planned to approach House Speaker William Murphy and Senate President Joseph Montalbano about reworking the wording to make it more agreeable to the tribe.

“The language that’s there is a concern to us,” said Thomas, deeply bronzed from a month-long vacation.

The law allowed Lincoln Park to add 1,750 slot machines and cleared the way for the park’s sale to BLB Investors. The first 600 machines have been installed and the governor’s office has said it is prepared to make the first payment to the tribe.

The law dictates that the tribe’s share go into a Tribal Development Fund dedicated to promoting home ownership and improvement, elderly housing, adult vocational training, health and social services, childcare, natural resource protection and economic development. The payments would stop upon the opening of any gambling establishment from which the tribe received money or other incentives. The payments could not be used to pay off debts.

Thomas would not enumerate what aspect of the law concerned him, other than to say the wording that laid out what the tribe “can and cannot do” with the money.

In September, one of the tribe’s previous partners filed a lawsuit seeking $10 million related to its casino effort. The shareholders of the former Capital Gaming International Inc. say the tribe’s cut of Lincoln’s slot revenue triggered an agreement that demands the tribe repay its expenses.

Thomas said yesterday that he requested the meeting with the governor several weeks ago in an effort to establish a dialogue with the state and to improve relations for “future generations” within the tribe. He said he expected more meetings to follow, though no dates had been set.

State and tribal economic development officials also plan to meet, but it was unclear what initiatives would be pursued.

Tribal-state relations have been plagued for years by disputes over whose laws apply on the Narragansetts’ land in Charlestown and the tribe’s casino quest — which Carcieri vehemently opposed.

The tribe has been dealt several recent blows. Voters last month dashed the Narragansetts’ plans to build a casino with Harrah’s Entertainment, despite an intense and costly advertising push. Weeks later, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the case spurred by the 2003 state police raid on the tribe’s tax-free smoke shop. In doing so, the court let stand a ruling that the state could enforce its laws on tribal land.

Carcieri said the resolution of those issues — at least for the meantime — should ease some tensions.

“My whole goal is just to sort of smooth it out and get an understanding between the two parties as to what laws apply and so forth,” he said.

The governor said any decision about the prosecution of Chief Thomas and seven other tribal members arrested in the smoke-shop raid in July 2003 would be left to Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch. Thomas was charged with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

A status conference in that case is set for Monday in District Court, South Kingstown.

“From my perspective, I would like to see the tribe prosper.”
Governor Carcieri