Billy Friend, chief of the Wyandotte, said that “we felt like we were patient,” but eventually they had “no recourse but to take action against the department.” Before a casino can be built on the land in Park City, Kansas, the Interior Department has to take the land into trust. The Wyandotte’s land-in-trust application spent three years at a regional office in Oklahoma before being passed on to the main office in Washington. Since January 2009, it has been sitting at the Interior Department awaiting Salazar’s approval.

The Wyandotte tribe purchased the land with land-claim settlement funds resulting from a 1984 law that reimbursed them for land the government took from them in Ohio in 1843. According to the tribe, because they bought the land with those settlement funds, the federal government has no choice but to take the land into trust and allow a casino.

“They have an obligation to take the land into trust and have failed their responsibility.” Five and a half years is a long time to wait for a response, so the tribe is understandably out of patience. The Interior Department now has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit. A similar case happened in Glendale, Arizona, where the Tohono O’odham Nation purchased land, asked it to be taken into trust and got no response. Then four months after suing the department, the land was taken into trust. The Wyandotte hope this case follows suit.

Peninsula Gaming plans to erect a $260 million casino called the Kansas Star. The casino would take four years to reach its final phase. They would open an interim casino in February 2012 in a building that will include casino games, horse racing, a convention center and more. That interim casino would include 32 table games and 1,310 slot machines. When the permanent casino opens in January 2013, it will include a hotel, restaurant and large poker room as well.

Before the deal is official, the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission will conduct a thorough screening of Peninsula Gaming and all of its employees. They must give the okay before Peninsula is awarded the 15-year contract from the state.

If the commission is conducting background investigations on Peninsula Gaming, they are likely going to look into the recent scandal in Iowa. Back in October, Peninsula’s president, Martin Brent Stevens, and another executive, Jonathan Swain, were charged with making illegal campaign contributions to Governor Chet Culver’s failed re-election campaign. According to the indictment, the executives violated Iowa’s disclosure rules by making contributions in someone else’s name. The contributions, not surprisingly, came as Peninsula was bidding for a contract to build a casino in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

In addition to the new casino to be built in Mulvane, two state lawmakers have drafted a bill to bring a new casino to southeast Kansas and slot machines to a dog track that is currently closed. The bill would reduce the required casino investment from $225 million to $100 million.

Right now lawmakers in Iowa are considering expanding their legal gambling by expanding the areas where it can occur. Currently casinos can only offer gambling on the gambling floors. The new legislation would allow gambling to occur in other rooms in the casino. The advantage would be that casinos could open poker rooms and start hosting major poker tournaments, which in theory could be a big source of revenue for the state. So it seems that in 2010, the politicians in Iowa finally realized that poker is big and involves a lot of money. In related news, the state legislature has said that they believe that the Internet is starting to catch on. If only there was a way of making money off of the Internet…

Meanwhile, Kansas lawmakers are basically asking for a do-over. In 2007, the Democratic-led Congress passed a law to bring in four state-owned casinos. As early as 2008, they realized that they wrote a terrible law that gave no incentive for anyone to actually buy property, build a casino on it, and open the business. Basically, the state charges way too much upfront for everyone involved and in a bad economy, no one is willing to risk paying that money. This is why Democrats should never try to have anything to do with business or economics. They simply have no understanding of either.

As a result of the bad bill, though the casinos are legal in the state, none exist. Last year, the lawmakers realized that they badly needed the casino revenue due to the recession, but were unwilling to take the time to discuss changing the law because they were too busy dealing with the recession and trying to find ways to help the economy (no, I’m not making this up). So now that, according to the federal government, the recession is over, they want a do-over.

Some Republicans are against amending the law. Republican House Speaker Mike O’Neal said that “they got the deal they wanted. They can live with the deal they got.” The Democratic response was something along the lines of, “Look, we’re Democrats. We always write terrible bills. That’s what we do! (It’s also why we don’t bother reading them). Don’t hold that against us. Let us try again and I assure you we’ll come up with a good one this time!”

The proposed changes in the law are aimed at making it more affordable for companies to come in and start up a casino. Among other things, there would be a drop in the investment that is required of developers from $225 million to $100 million. There is also a fee that must be paid up front to the state for the privilege of allowing the state to run your casino. That fee would drop from $25 million to $11 million. Another change would be to give the developers a larger cut of the profits from the casinos.

It will be interesting to see if the Kansas lawmakers do end up rewriting the gambling bill and if so, whether it will bring any casinos to the state. If not, they can always try again. If at first you don’t succeed…