San Antonio residents make up 75% of clients at tribe's Lucky Eagle Casino in Eagle...
Josephine Garza, a poker dealer and member of the Kickapoo tribe, right, deals cards for players including Ricardo Lopez, left, and Debbie Valdez, both of Eagle Pass, in the Poker room at the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino in Eagle Pass on Saturday, April 19, 2014., Native American tribal leaders who operate the state’s largest casino are sounding the alarm, warning they would lose most of their customers and face possible bankruptcy under the leading plan to bring Vegas-style resorts to the state.
Twenty-seven years later, the Kickapoos still generate most of their revenue from the Lucky Eagle, which is authorized under a federal law that gives Native American tribes special gaming rights. They are the only one of Texas’ three federally recognized tribes to have fully eluded the state’s strict anti-gambling laws, as state officials waged a decades-long legal battle to shut down gaming facilities operated by the Alabama-Coushatta in East Texas and the Tigua in El Paso.
To preserve their access to the metro area, the Kickapoos are pushing lawmakers — without any success thus far — to amend the casino gaming legislation to allow the tribe to operate its own destination resort around the San Antonio area. The tribe, arguing its sparsely populated border region would leave them with nowhere else to turn, has gotten lawmakers to tack similar amendments onto gaming legislation in past sessions, though none of those proposals came close to passing the Legislature.
Still, both proposals will be put to the test in the coming weeks, starting with a Thursday deadline to reach the House floor for a preliminary vote. Yet advocates of expanded gaming say a show of support from the House could help move the needle in future sessions, even if the measures die in the Senate this time. And Kickapoo leaders are still holding out hope their amendments will make it into the legislation if the House decides to vote on it this week.
Without a compact, the tribes would remain limited to what’s known as Class II gambling, or bingo-based games that stand a notch below Las Vegas-style options such as blackjack, craps and roulette.
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