The 2006 agreement said the money was to be used to build carpool lanes on Highway 50 near the casino to alleviate what officials’ thought would be a dramatic increase in traffic. “While we may not have all the relevant information, it is difficult to understand why such a concession would be given to a gaming business that has wrought such harm on our local economy.”

“The business community is unclear as to why El Dorado County would in essence subsidize poor business performance of one select business to the detriment of the county’s citizens, especially those located in the Tahoe basin,” B Gorman, CEO-president of Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce, told Lake Tahoe News. Not a penny has been spent in Tahoe on Red Hawk’s impact on the South Shore. The money must be “spent on things impacted by the casino,” Knapp said.ĭavis told Lake Tahoe News, “I always advocated some of that money should come to the East Slope because our casino business is impacted.” No money from the tribe has been used to mitigate that negative impact. What they didn’t listen to were projections that gamblers stopping in Shingle Springs would never make it to Tahoe so it negatively impacted the county as a whole. While officials on the South Shore made noise about how the Indian casino would be bad for the basin section of the county, the supervisors only saw the potential dollar signs in front of them. This was pre-recession, and although gaming was declining, it was still a huge reason to come to the South Shore. “The original agreement hammered out with the tribe was the richest agreement ever in American history of a local public entity and an Indian tribe.” “All the money that the tribe paid to the county was for mitigation … the negative impacts we expected when the casino went in,” Ed Knapp, who today became chief county counsel, told Lake Tahoe News. Ultimately, the Indians agreed to pay the county $5.2 million a year for 20 years. The 2006 agreement stemmed from a settlement involving a lawsuit the county had filed against the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians in regards to the interchange that needed to be built to access the casino from Highway 50, along with environmental concerns. Red Hawk Casino has had financial issues since it opened in December 2008.

Red hawk casino commercial