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Source: Mashpee Wampanoag end contract with former congressman
By Tanner SteningPosted Jul 22, 2019
MASHPEE — The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is no longer paying The Delahunt Group LLC, but the longtime lobbyist will continue working for the tribe on a pro-bono basis, according to sources.
The Delahunt Group, which is led by former Cape and Islands congressman Bill Delahunt, D-Quincy, filed a termination report on July 3 as a lobbying disclosure. The group received $30,000 during the first quarter of 2019 for work connected to the tribe’s ongoing effort to pass federal legislation that would protect the tribe’s sovereignty status and off-Cape land claims.
Last year, the tribe paid the firm $120,000, according to the lobbying database filings.
The Lobbying Disclosure Act requires that lobbyists file quarterly reports with the government if a client’s spending exceeds $3,000.
The tribe hired The Delahunt Group in March 2011 after working closely with the congressman in the tribe’s bid for federal recognition a decade earlier. Delahunt did not return a message requesting comment on the firm’s relationship with the tribe.
Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell could not be reached Monday through a spokesperson. He told the Times previously that Delahunt originally helped the tribe pursue gaming and navigate the federal bureaucracies for health care, housing and education for tribe members.
“He supported us in our pursuit of federal recognition,” Cromwell said. “He understands the tribe’s sovereign rights and the fight we had for 30-plus years for federal recognition.”
At the time, Delahunt had decried a federal government “replete with bureaucracy, impasse, inertia, and sometimes outright hostility” to tribes.
Delahunt’s lobbying firm has helped to identify and facilitate grants, sources said.
The tribe still has an arsenal of high-powered lobbyists working for it, including Dentons US LLP, Gavel Resources LLC and Ballard Partners, among others.
Lobbying disclosures reflect a $50,000 payment from Genting Malasia, the tribe’s financial backer, to Ballard Partners during the second quarter of the year, according to a July 17 filing.
Ballard Partners is run by Brian Ballard, who was President Donald Trump’s Florida finance chairman for his 2016 campaign. Dubbed “the most powerful lobbyist in Trump’s Washington” by Politico, Ballard has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican causes over the past two years, according to data from the Federal Election Commission’s website.
But because of the tribe’s ongoing financial woes — and because Genting has stopped providing the tribe with loans — it is unclear if the lobbying firms are being paid for the work.
The Malaysian-based casino developer had fulfilled its contractual obligations to the tribe, according to tribal leaders, but is still backing efforts to stop a legal effort threatening the tribe’s 151 acres of reservation land in Taunton, where the tribe is looking to build a $1 billion casino.
ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS DONE IN MASSACHUSETTS WAS THE PUSH TO EXPAND ALCOHOL SERVICE....IT WAS PREDICTED THAT BEFORE THE INK WAS DRY, LOBBYISTS WOULD SEEK TO AMEND THE LEGISLATION.....
JUST WAIT.....
JUST WAIT.....
Conn. ended push for 24-hour bars at casinos after crash
State had hoped to collect more slot machine profits
 | DRIVER CHARGED A sailor, Daniel E. Musser, 24, is charged with manslaughter and driving under the influence and faces up to 19 years in prison. |
HARTFORD - Officials looking to help solve Connecticut's multibillion-dollar deficit thought they had found an easy way to raise another $5 million a year: allow casinos to serve alcohol 24 hours a day.
More hours of bar service would mean more gambling, they figured, which would mean the state could collect more slot machine profits.
But the proposal by Governor M. Jodi Rell's administration came to a sudden end at about 3:30 a.m. on March 7, when a car leaving the Mohegan Sun casino turned the wrong way down Interstate 395, headlights off, and slammed into a van full of college students on their way to Logan International Airport. They were scheduled for a flight to Uganda, where they had plans to help out at an orphan age over spring break.
Elizabeth Durante, a 20-year-old pre-med student at Connecticut College in New London, was killed.
The car's driver, Daniel E. Musser, 24, a sailor from the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, was charged with manslaughter and driving under the influence and faces up to 19 years in prison.
The next day, Rell called Durante's death "an unconscionable tragedy" and pulled back her budget proposal to make alcohol available 24 hours at the casinos.
"Even though this accident occurred under the laws as they have been for many years, the governor said it does give one pause to question the wisdom of extending liquor service hours at the casinos," Christopher Cooper, Rell spokesman, said recently. "We don't believe the bill is going to move forward this session."
Chuck Bunnell, chief of staff for the Mohegan Tribal Council, agreed.
"The Tribal Council in general has taken the position that it's time to pause and mourn the loss of this very bright light of humanity," Bunnell said, "that it's not appropriate to have those discussions right now."
Bunnell said the tribe was originally "approached on a bipartisan basis" by lawmakers looking for ways to increase state revenue.
Lori A. Potter, a spokeswoman for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, said analysts at the tribe's Foxwoods Resort Casino stand by their prediction that extending casino bar hours would result in an increase in state revenue.
"It is important to note that it would be impossible to find a more heavily regulated serving establishment in the state of Connecticut than the two casinos," Potter said.
Connecticut law requires the casinos' bars to stop serving by 1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and by 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. One of the arguments originally used in favor of allowing longer serving hours was that their competitors in Atlantic City serve alcohol 24 hours a day.
Legal hours for bars to serve alcohol vary greatly across the United States, according to Steven Schmidt, vice president for public policy at the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association.
In Massachusetts, for example, state law allows service until 11 p.m., but local governing bodies can extend the hours to 2 a.m. In states such as New Jersey and Nevada, Schmidt said, local authorities are allowed to set bar closing hours.
Charles H. Gartman, one of the students with Durante in the van that night, has difficulty understanding why anyone thought round-the-clock liquor at the casinos was a good idea.
"Twenty-four-hour bar service is a little bit ridiculous," Gartman said last week in a phone interview from his New York City home. "You can't trust everyone to drink and drive safely."
Gartman, 19 and a sophomore at Connecticut College, has not yet recovered from injuries he suffered in the crash.
The five other passengers also suffered injuries, some minor.
"Both my legs were pretty banged up, and at first I couldn't walk," he said. "I have pretty severe lacerations on my chin."
Nor has he recovered from the loss of Durante, of West Islip, N.Y. Gartman said it was Durante who got him interested in going to Uganda to aid orphaned children. "It was her enthusiasm for helping people," he recalled.
Stephanie Hinman, who was Durante's roommate and one of the students on the Uganda trip, finds it ironic that her friend would die at the hands of an accused drunk driver.
"Neither Liz nor I ever drank," Hinman said from her home in Norfolk, Conn.
"We lived together in the substance-free dorm."
In a 2007 interview with a college publication, Durante said she wanted to become a surgeon and work in Africa with Doctors Without Borders.
For Janice Heggie Margolis, executive director of the Connecticut chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Durante's death provided tragic evidence of why casino liquor hours should never be expanded.
She said the potential price to society of more fatal crashes is simply too high, no matter how much money might flow to the state. "This is exactly the reason why," Heggie Margolis said.
"You can never put on paper the cost of a life."
http://archive.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2009/03/22/conn_ended_push_for_24_hour_bars_at_casinos_after_crash/
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