A Jackpot From Indian Gaming Tribes

Contracts Canceled

New members of Michigan's Saginaw Chippewa tribal council have gone a step further. They canceled Abramoff's contract two months ago and have just terminated a contract with Scanlon that would have paid him another $2.7 million this quarter. In just over two years, the tribe paid $3.9 million to Greenberg Traurig and $10 million to Scanlon's firm, according to lobbying reports, contracts and tribal documents obtained by The Post. The fees accounted for 25 percent of the tribe's entire budget in 2002.

"Tribes are gullible," said Bernard Sprague, a Saginaw Chippewa tribal council member who has led the effort to cancel the contracts. "These guys come in and say, 'They are going to take your sovereignty or your land or your livelihood unless you pay us outrageous amounts of money.' They need to be exposed because tribes don't know."

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in Palm Springs, Calif., hired Abramoff's firm in mid-2002, and a year later had paid $1.68 million in lobbying fees. At Abramoff's direction, tribe members said, the tribe hired Scanlon to build a database of political supporters and to conduct a $7.4 million letter-writing campaign designed to win support from then-Gov. Gray Davis (D) for more slot machines. That unsuccessful effort generated about 2,000 letters, according to sources close to the tribe -- at a cost of $3,700 per letter.

"There are people here, just like at other tribes, concerned about the fees and whether they are appropriate for what they are getting for the tribes," said Barbara Gonzales Lyons, vice chairman of the Agua Caliente tribal council.

In Michigan and in Louisiana, a few tribal council leaders sometimes made spending decisions without disclosing the details to others, according to the minutes of council meetings and interviews with tribe members. "We were dishing out huge amounts of money for campaigning and lobbying. We're trying to find out what we were paying for," said David Sickey, who was elected in June to Louisiana's Coushatta Choctaw tribal council.

That tribe has spent $32 million on unspecified "lobbying" costs since 2001, according to an internal memo prepared in May by outgoing tribe comptroller Erick LaRocque. Complaining that "documentation of the nature of these expenditures is very limited," LaRocque's memo said that "approximately $24 million of these funds were taken from the funds designated for health, housing and education of tribal members," and that the council had obtained a $10 million line of credit to cover other expenditures.

"It's disturbing -- it is a huge sum," said Sickey, adding that the "lion's share" of the money went to Scanlon's Capital Campaign Strategies public affairs firm. The Daily Town Talk newspaper in Alexandria, La., has reported that an internal tribe audit shows that the firm received $13.7 million during a one-year period ending in 2002. "Tribal members were not aware of this, not at all," Sickey said.

"We got involved with them around 2000 when we had to get a gaming compact renewed with the state of Louisiana," said Bert Langley, who then served as the Coushattas' secretary-treasurer. "Scanlon and Jack were around for a few meetings. They said they had a good network going. They would mention Tom DeLay and all that bunch, but I'm not sure what they did or who they talked to."

Langley said that Abramoff and Scanlon dealt primarily with tribal council member William Worfel.

Worfel issued a statement praising Scanlon's database and public relations work, saying he helped the Coushattas win a potentially costly compact fight with another tribe seeking to build a casino nearby. "The reports of how much the tribe paid Capital Campaign Strategies and other firms are completely inaccurate," the statement said. He did not return calls seeking an interview.

A fourth tribe, the Mississippi Choctaws, has paid Greenberg Traurig $4.5 million since 2001. A spokeswoman said the tribe also employs one of Scanlon's firms, but she declined to say how much it has been paid.