PERRY/Don’t break Tribal Compact
If the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians opens its proposed gaming facility in Jones County, it won’t be the first house of chance to litter that deeply religious portion of the Pine Belt.
Club Eleven was a bootlegger supplied bingo and blackjack hall on Highway 11 between Laurel and Hattiesburg, a haunt for ne’re-do-wells in the 1950s before it burned to the ground. Dixie Mafia king-pin Mike Gillich managed Club Eleven, sold the liquor and fixed the games according to Chet Nicholson’s book, “Dream Room.”
Whether memories of such illegal joints still haunt the citizens of Jones County, or social mores outweigh hospitality, or leaders reject it on public policy grounds, opposition to the Choctaw venture includes Gov. Haley Barbour, U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper and Jones native State Auditor Stacey Pickering.
The fight over the new Choctaw gaming facility is between two leaders looking out for the best interest of their people.
Gov. Barbour – who refers to the project as a “slot-parlor” – consistently opposes gaming expansion in Mississippi, while supporting established gaming areas as legal and legitimate businesses that pump millions of dollars of revenue into the state coffers, and bring non-gaming investments like golf courses, shopping centers, and hotel-restaurant-resorts. Barbour seems to oppose the Choctaw facility on some of the same grounds he opposes a lottery, that it: targets lower income individuals, brings little to no additional economic development, and cannibalizes other casinos to the detriment of state tax revenue.
Madison Journal
6/30/10
Magnolia Tribune
