Town Counsel Says No to Aquinnah Casino and No Comment to Off-Island Casino

Last month after the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) announced that it would consider building a casino on the Island, the Aquinnah selectmen requested the opinion of town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport on the subject according to the Martha’s Vineyard Times.

Rappaport’s response came in the form of a letter to the town selectmen dated April 27, 2012, in which Rappaport stated, “The simple answer to the question is no.”

While that may be the simple answer, the letter goes on for seven pages explaining how and why he came to this conclusion.

What it comes down to is the same 1983 settlement agreement at the heart of the tribe’s argument with the state over its rights to build a casino on the mainland.

To date, Gov. Deval Patrick’s office has with the tribe for a license to build a casino on . At the same time, Patrick’s office has moved forward with similar negotiations with the Mashpee Wampanoag for a casino in Taunton.

An article in the Cape Cod Times published late last month said, “In his letter to the tribe, attorney Jerome Levine of Holland & Knight, a consultant hired to help the Patrick administration negotiate a compact, repeated the state's contention that the Aquinnah's land settlement in 1985 ‘acknowledges, preserves and protects the commonwealth's authority to regulate gaming both on the Aquinnah's land in Gay Head and on any after-acquired land within Massachusetts.’”

In response to these claims, the tribe has contended that the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) supersedes that settlement agreement and maintains that pursuing a casino on their federal reservation land on Martha's Vineyard remains a possibility.

To this, Rappaport included in his letter a section of that settlement agreement that states that any land owned by the tribe “shall be subject to the civil and criminal laws, ordinances, and jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Town of Gay Head, Massachusetts (including those laws and regulations which prohibit or regulate the conduct of bingo or any other game of chance.)”

He also points to a letter that the tribe received in 1997 after requesting an opinion from the Office of the Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior as to whether IGRA superseded the settlement agreement.

“The Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs issued a five page opinion, in which the Department concluded that the IGRA did not supersede the Settlement Agreement, or the implementing State and Federal Acts, and that the Tribe could not conduct gaming in Aquinnah,” Rappaport’s letter said.

While the letter acknowledges that the tribe may in fact, under the IGRA, be able to seek gaming options elsewhere, Rappaport stated that he has, “no opinion as to whether the Settlement Agreement would preclude the Tribe from conducting gaming activities elsewhere in the Commonwealth.”