The Kialegee Tribal Town is moving closer to realizing its Red Clay Clay Casino in Broken Arrow, OK, on a privately owned Indian allotment just outside of Tulsa.  The project is controversial, to say the least.  Last week, Broken Arrow's longtime city manager was fired, apparently as a result of community backlash against the planned casino.  This week, Broken Arrow City Attorney Beth Anne Wilkening updated the council on the status of Attorney General Scott Pruitt's lawsuit against the Kialegee Tribal Town in an effort to stop construction of the Red Clay Casino.  She was quoted in the

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Kathryn is quoted in this Press Democrat article on the compact provisions for the Graton Rancheria's casino in Rohnert Park in Sonoma County, California.  In short, the compact provisions require the tribe to reach additional agreements with the county and city to alleviate a range of impacts.  Not surprisingly, local officials are talking about alleviation in terms of dollars to the county and city.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is set to start Class III compact negotiations with the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe for a possible casino in Taunton.  The Tribe had issued a formal request for compact negotiations earlier this week.  Under IGRA, the Tribe's formal request triggers the state's duty to negotiate in good faith.  25 U.S.C. section 2710(d)(3) provides, "Any Indian tribe having jurisdiction over the Indian lands upon which a class III gaming activity is . . .

The NCAA men's basketball tournament is underway, and for many, "work" will become a distraction from hoops-watching.  March Madness is everywhere, and the White House is no exception.

President Obama's brackets were introduced by ESPN to much fanfare, and why not?  Obama is the Commander in Chief, after all, and a pretty good hoopster, to boot.  (He picks the UNC Tar Heels to win it all, in case you hadn't heard.  Harvard, his alma mater, didn't fare so well.)

More coverage in the Tulsa World on the ongoing controversy over a possible tribal casino in suburban Tulsa.  Citizen groups have pressured local government officials to take drastic action, including denying water and sewer services to the land where the casino is planned.  The group has dropped this particular demand, after a clear-headed city attorney questioned the constitutionality . . . .

This Boston Globe editorial encourages "special treatment" for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts. Critics, of course, use the term "special treatment" to signal discrimination against the majority, in this case everyone other than the tribe. But here "special treatment" really means "treatment that takes into account that the Tribe is a government." To treat the Tribe no differently than an individual or a corporation is inappropriate under federal law. Further, as the editorial points out, the Mashpee have an historical and present-day context that the state should care about.

Connecticut policymakers are listening to tribal concerns about online gambling -- including current illegal Internet gaming and the possibility of future state-regulated Internet gaming.  In this CBS story, representatives from the Mashantucket Pequot and the Mohegan Tribes held out the carrot of the tribes' capacity to offer online gaming, should the state choose to legalize it.  As everybody knows, Connecticut profits from Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun -- this year, the tribes' payments to the state approached $360 million.  Negotiating online gaming with the tribes is an opportunity for the state to confine legalized Internet gambling and possibly to profit from increased tribal-state revenue sharing.  But the tribal representatives brought out a stick, too, stating