What will the next decade bring? Redding Rancheria deciding what the future holds
The Redding Rancheria might be best known in the region for its role as the operator of the Win-River Resort & Casino.
Over the last several years, the Native American tribe has increasingly become more involved in the region's health care delivery system and political scene. And it has prevailed in a long held and sometimes controversial bid to relocate its existing casino to a property along the Sacramento River just south of Redding, where a hotel, gambling and entertainment complex is now planned.
Opponents in 2020 tried unsuccessfully to block the casino development in the area known as Strawberry Fields.
In February, other opponents filed a lawsuit demanding that the Shasta County Board of Supervisors set aside/and or rescind its decision last year to approve a 30-year contract for the county to provide fire, law enforcement, traffic control and road maintenance services once the complex is built. As of March 11, a groundbreaking date had not been set.
Filed by California Land Stewardship Council, the lawsuit says the contract approved by the board was illegal and its financial terms "constitute waste of public funds."
Redding Rancheria CEO Tracy Edwards said at the time that the group's lawsuit is a "political stunt" and a "possibly misguided attempt to delay our casino relocation project." Most of the allegations in the lawsuit, Edwards said, are "demonstrably false."
The Rancheria intends to build a 69,541-square-foot casino, nine-story, 250-room hotel, restaurants, a conference center, an event center, convention center and a 132,000-square-foot regional retail center on a portion of the 232 acres of undeveloped land the tribe owns near the Costco store that opened in late 2022.
Win-River's current hotel has 84 rooms, while its casino covers about 60,000 square feet on Highway 273 between Clear Creek and Canyon roads.
More: Why Redding Rancheria's plan to expand, relocate Win-River Casino has caused a divide
What will the next decade bring?
That's the topic to be explored as the Native American tribe this week holds its Soaring Forward Strategic Planning Conference on Wednesday and Thursday at Win-River.
Redding Rancheria approved to build at Strawberry Fields off Interstate 5
About 150 people, including tribal leadership, members of the tribe and invited community leaders will attend the planning event, which is designed to help guide the Redding Rancheria's focus during the next 10 years.
The strategy-setting session was last held in 2014, with the results published in 2015.
Said Redding Rancheria COO Stacey Carmen via email: "There are many efforts/programs that we see today, the biggest being the groundbreaking of our Health Village on March 17."
The Redding Rancheria intends for its upcoming $232 million Tribal Health Village in Shasta County to be a place where people can see their cardiologist or dermatologist, get an acupuncture treatment, learn to cook healthy meals, work out in the pool or treat themselves to a spa day.
The 185,000-square-foot complex could open in about two years, said Glen Hayward, executive director of Redding Rancheria Tribal Health Systems.
This week's goal-setting session, Carmen said, "is one of many that will occur and the end result will be our published Strategic Plan for 2025-2035."
Michele Chandler covers public safety, dining and whatever else comes up for the Redding Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. Accepts story tips at 530-338-7753 and at mrchandler@gannett.com. Please support our entire newsroom's commitment to public service journalism by subscribing today.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Redding Rancheria holds once-a-decade planning conference this week
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
11 hours ago
- Forbes
How To Lock In Yields Up To 17.1% In Historically Cheap Small Caps
Small-cap stocks haven't been this cheap in decades. This valuation advantage gets interesting when we add big fat dividends and today, we'll discuss five cheap small caps yielding between 8.3% and 17.1%. (That's no typo by the way—we only talk serious dividends here at Contrarian Outlook!) The Apples, Google and Microsofts of the world are priced like luxury goods. Smaller stocks, meanwhile, have been left at the discount rack. Let's shop: The valuation spread between the S&P 500 and S&P 600 hasn't been this wide since Bill Clinton was wondering whether dot-com was one word or two. Is a bust to follow again or are these big yields from small stocks really spectacular deals? Let's explore. Israel-based Platytika Holding (PLTK) is a gamemaker that primarily makes casino-themed titles for countries on just about every continent. Here in the U.S., Playtika's best-known titles include Bingo Blitz, Redecor and Domino Dreams. Playtika has done quite a bit of building by acquisition, purchasing Seriously, Youda Games, Innplay Labs and, most recently, SuperPlay, among others. (It tried to buy Angry Birds maker Rovio in 2023, but the deal eventually fell apart.) Playtika hasn't been a dividend stock for very long—it initiated its dividend program in late February 2024. About a year ago, when I examined PLTK among other 'inaugural dividends,' I mentioned its 10-cent-quarterly dividend translated into a nice 5% yield, but also more than 60% of the company's estimated earnings for 2024. By the time all was said and done, it ended up being closer to 70% of adjusted profits for last year. Fast-forward to today: PLTK hasn't raised its payout, but it now yields north of 8%. This is the 'wrong way' to raise a dividend. PLTK Total Returns Ycharts As I said in my previous writeup, the mobile game market is brutal, especially among the 'free to play' titles that Playtika specializes in. PLTK had been suffering from years of profit declines and flat sales, and sure enough, 2024 saw another drop in earnings and a modest decline in sales. And yet … the few pros who cover the stock are quite bullish about what comes next. While revenue growth estimates for the next two years aren't much to scream over, they're looking for a 32% jump in profits this year, and a respectable 23% improvement in 2026. Meanwhile, PLTK's woeful performance has driven the dividend higher and its valuation down to a dirt-cheap 6 times forward earnings. Still, Playtika is asking for a lot of faith in its growth prospects while (so far) providing very little evidence. Carlyle Secured Lending (CGBD) is a business development company (BDC) that's externally managed by a subsidiary of multinational asset manager Carlyle Group (CG). CGBD invests primarily in U.S. middle market companies with between $25 million and $100 million in annual EBITDA. And it predominantly deals in first-lien debt (83%), though it has single-digit exposure to second-lien debt, equity investments and even investment funds. Its 138 portfolio companies cover a couple dozen industries, including healthcare/pharmaceuticals, software, consumer services, and business services. Carlyle Secured Lending came public in 2017. And as we neared the end of 2024, I noted that shares had and spent most of their time putting up downright excellent returns. Things have changed—drastically!—since then. CGBD Total Returns Ycharts What went wrong? Two earnings reports have revealed some growing cracks in Carlyle's armor. In February, profits came in below estimates, thanks largely to a markdown on hotel management company Aimbridge Hospitality. It also doubled the number of companies on non-accrual (loans that are delinquent for a prolonged period, usually 90 days), from two to four. In May, the company reported disappointing earnings again, and an additional company went on non-accrual, bringing non-accruals up to 1.6% of the total portfolio at fair value. More importantly, the company announced it would only pay a base dividend of 40 cents per share. That's problematic for two reasons: Based on net investment income (NII) estimates for the rest of the year, dividend coverage could be tight; it's possible the company might need to rely on 'spillover' income to cover the payout for at least a quarter or two. CGBD is just a couple months removed from a potentially beneficial merger with another BDC, Carlyle Secured Lending III; even without any more specials, its base dividend translates into an 11%-plus yield; and shares now trade at a nice 16% discount to net asset value (NAV). But I'd like to see signs that CGBD is correcting its recent operational slide. Bain Capital Specialty Finance (BCSF) is a diversified BDC that provides a variety of financing solutions to 175 portfolio companies primarily in North America, but also Europe and Australia (a rarity for many BDCs). The lion's share of Bain Capital's investments are first-lien in nature—in addition to 64% exposure directly through portfolio companies, it also has almost 16% more through its investment vehicles. It also deals in equity and preferred equity interest, as well as second-lien and subordinated debt. Unlike CGBD, Bain Capital hasn't exactly lit the industry on fire, but it has caught its stride over the past couple of years. Other reasons to like it? A low cost of debt, a higher-than-average portfolio yield (made even better by its joint ventures), investment-grade debt and an 11% discount to NAV. However I'm nervous about its dividend situation. Dividend coverage has been a strength for the past couple of years, but that could be changing. In 2024, Bain Capital stopped a short streak of dividend hikes and kept its 42-cent regular dividend in place. It instead began paying 3-cent quarterly special dividends, which it has kept up with ever since. That 45 cents quarterly comes out to $1.80 per share in annual dividends. However, analysts expect net investment income to drop from $2.09 per share in 2024 to $1.84 per share this year and $1.82 per share in 2026. That means dividend ratios in the 98%-99% range, which leaves almost no room for error. If BCSF does run into difficulty over the next couple of years, we could see the special dividends reduced or taken away outright—certainly a better look than having to cut a regular dividend, but the practical end result is still less income, even if temporarily. On the other hand, the base-and-special system gives BCSF room to reward us more if Wall Street's expectations prove overly pessimistic. Let's move to another high-yield corner of the market: mortgage real estate investment trusts (mREITs). For the unfamiliar: The typical REIT deals in physical properties—apartments, strip malls, hospitals, casinos. But mortgage REITs deal in 'paper' real estate. They borrow at low short-term rates, lend that cash out in the form of mortgages based on long-term rates, then pocket the difference. If 'long' rates (like those on the 10-year Treasury) are steady or, better yet, declining, that's great news for mREITs. New loans pay less, so their existing loans become more valuable. That's been a mixed bag for mREITs in 2025, which enjoyed declining rates for the first couple months of the year, but have been suffering from a rebound ever since. First up is Two Harbors Investment (TWO), which deals in mortgage servicing rights (MSRs), agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBSs) and other financial assets. It also owns an operational platform, RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing LLC, and it has a direct-to-consumer originations business that's still in its early innings. Whenever we see a yield near 20%, it's almost always caused by a sharp decline in share prices. That's very much the case with Two Harbors, whose shares traded in the $60s before collapsing during COVID, only mildly rebounded, then deteriorated ever since to current prices around $10 per share. That action pretty accurately reflected a miserable operating picture: TWO Dividend Ycharts Still, we're talking about a 17%-plus yield. If there's any sort of redeeming value, it's worth looking into. Well, Two Harbors has been working on lowering its debt-to-equity ratio, the company's book value ticked up in the most recent quarter, and it trades at a low 70% of that (still relatively decimated) book value. But all of those positive bullet points have been canceled out by an 8-K filed near the end of May. Two Harbors announced it was taking a $198.9 million charge related to litigation dating back to 2020 against PRCM Advisers, its former external manager. That comes out to roughly $1.90 per share, or 13% of TWO's last reported book value of $14.66 per share. The potential danger is that this significant hit to book value could impact earnings available for distribution (EAD), putting its current dividend rate of 45 cents per share at risk. While the company doesn't report earnings until July, TWO typically announces its dividends in the middle of the month prior to the month in which it reports—so, in this case, we might know by sometime in mid-June. Too much dividend drama. Take Franklin BSP Realty Trust (FBRT), a mortgage REIT dealing in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBSs). Multifamily is king here, at more than 70% of the portfolio, but FBRT is happy to take on just about any type of commercial property—it also holds loans in hospitality, industrial, office, retail and other sectors. Virtually all of its portfolio is senior debt, and nearly 90% of that is floating-rate in nature. Collateralized loan obligations are the bulk of its financing sources at a hair over 80%, but Franklin BSP Realty Trust also has 11% exposure to warehouse lending (credit lines extended by banks to originate mortgages), 5% to repurchase agreements (repo), and sprinklings of unsecured debt and asset-specific financing. FBRT shares are down by double digits year-to-date, but now trade at an attractive 28% discount to book and a P/E of around 7 based on 2026 earnings estimates, which is pretty low among mREITs. And there are reasons for optimism—chiefly, the looming July close on the acquisition of NewPoint Holdings JV LLC. The deal to absorb this privately held commercial real estate finance company could set Franklin apart from other commercial mREITs. Again, though, the dividend situation is perhaps shakier than many of us would want. For one, the payout hasn't budged since the company started trading in 2021. Also problematic—real-estate owned (basically, foreclosures) and short-term non-market financing have been dragging on earnings. On the most recent conference call, CFO Jerome Baglien said, 'While we believe in the long-term earning power of the company to cover the dividend, if REO sales slow or volatile market conditions persist, it could be prudent to revisit our dividend in the short term.' There is a little good news: If earnings expectations stay on track, on the other side of FBRT's short-term drag is a path to more solid dividend coverage longer-term. Brett Owens is Chief Investment Strategist for Contrarian Outlook. For more great income ideas, get your free copy his latest special report: How to Live off Huge Monthly Dividends (up to 8.7%) — Practically Forever. Disclosure: none
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
‘Prudent remedy' for veto error is special session, Legislative Council advises
Gov. Kelly Armstrong speaks during a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 27, 2025. (Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor) Legal staff for North Dakota's legislative branch concluded the 'prudent remedy' to correct an error with Gov. Kelly Armstrong's line-item veto would be for the governor to call a special session, according to a memo issued Friday. But Attorney General Drew Wrigley, who is working on a separate opinion, maintains that Legislative Council has no role in determining the execution of the governor's veto. Armstrong announced May 22 a 'markup error' with a line-item veto that crossed out $35 million for a state housing development fund. The red X over the funding did not match what Armstrong indicated in his veto message that explained his reasoning. North Dakota governor unintentionally vetoes $35 million for housing programs A Legislative Council memo distributed to lawmakers Friday concluded that legal precedent supports the marked-up bill as the official veto document. 'Engaging in interpretive gymnastics' to disregard the markings on the bill could lead to unintended consequences in the future, Legislative Council concluded. Emily Thompson, legal division director for Legislative Council, said the Legislature needs to have an objective document to clearly illustrate what was vetoed, such as the specific veto markings on the bill, so lawmakers can exercise their veto override authority effectively. Lawmakers have six days remaining in their 80-day limit and could call themselves back into session to address the veto. However, the memo cautions that the Legislature may need those days to reconvene to respond to federal funding issues or other unforeseen reasons. Legislative Council recommends the governor call a special session, which would not count against the 80-day limit. A special session of the Legislature costs about $65,000 per day, according to Legislative Council. Armstrong is waiting for an attorney general's opinion to determine the next steps, according to a statement from his office. He previously said he would call a special session if necessary. Wrigley said Friday it's up to his office to assess the situation and issue an opinion on the governor's question. 'The power in question is strictly the governor's power and it has to be in compliance with the constitution and laws of North Dakota,' Wrigley said. 'That's the only assessment here. There's no role for this in Legislative Council. They have no authority in this regard.' Armstrong on May 19 issued two line-item vetoes in Senate Bill 2014, the budget for the state Industrial Commission. His veto message explained his reasons for objecting to a $150,000 one-time grant for a Native American-focused organization to fund a homelessness liaison position. But the marking also crossed out $25 million for housing projects and programs and $10 million to combat homelessness, which he later said he did not intend to veto. Chris Joseph, general counsel for Armstrong, wrote in a request for an attorney general's opinion that the markings served as a 'color-coded visual aid,' and the veto message should control the extent of the veto. Wrigley said his office is working on the opinion and aware that resolution of the issue is time sensitive. Bills passed by the Legislature with appropriations attached to them, such as the Industrial Commission budget, go into effect July 1. 'I look forward to publishing my opinion on that at the earliest possible time,' he said. The Legislative Council memo states, 'It would not be appropriate to allow the governor and attorney general to resolve the ambiguity by agreement.' In addition, Legislative Council concluded that if the governor's veto message is to be considered the controlling document for vetoes in the future, more ambiguities would likely be 'inevitable and frequent' and require resolution through the courts. The memo cites a 2018 North Dakota Supreme Court opinion involving a case between the Legislature and then-Gov. Doug Burgum that ruled 'a veto is complete and irrevocable upon return of the vetoed bill to the originating house,' and further stated the governor does not have the power to 'withdraw a veto.' 'Setting a precedent of the attorney general issuing a letter saying we can just go ahead and interpret the governor's veto message to mean what was, or was not, vetoed, that's a really concerning precedent to set,' Thompson said in an interview. Wrigley said any issues resulting from the opinion could be addressed by the courts. 'I sincerely hope that they (Legislative Council) are not trying to somehow publicly advocate, or attempt to influence a process for which they have no role,' Wrigley said. Legislative Council memo SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Government moves to drop Sheetz race case after Trump halts use of key civil rights tool
Federal authorities moved Friday to drop a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Sheetz convenience store chain, part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump's administration to halt the use of a key tool for enforcing the country's civil rights laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the top federal agency for enforcing workers rights, filed a motion in a Pennsylvania federal court to dismiss the Sheetz lawsuit, citing Trump's executive order directing federal agencies to deprioritize the use of 'disparate impact liability' in civil rights enforcement. Disparate impact liability holds that policies that are neutral on their face can violate civil rights laws if they impose artificial barriers that disadvantage different demographic groups. The concept has been used to root out practices that close off minorities, women, people with disabilities, older adults or other groups from certain jobs, or keep them from accessing credit or equal pay. Trump's executive order is part of his campaign to upend civil rights enforcement through firings and other steps that have consolidated his power over quasi-independent agencies like the EEOC, redirecting them to implement his priorities, including stamping out diversity and inclusion practices and eroding the rights of transgender people. In the Sheetz case, filed in April 2024 under the Biden administration, the EEOC had claimed that the company's policy of refusing to hire anyone who failed its criminal background checks discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job applicants. The lawsuit could survive even if the EEOC drops it: A Black worker who was let go from his Sheetz job in Pennsylvania filed a motion in federal court Thursday evening to intervene and pursue his own class action lawsuit. In its motion Friday, the EEOC asked the court to delay its dismissal of the lawsuit for 60 days to allow potential claimants to intervene. The Supreme Court recognized the concept of disparate impact in a landmark 1971 case, which held that a North Carolina power plant discriminated against Black employees by requiring high school diplomas and an intelligence test for certain higher paying roles, even though the requirements were irrelevant to the jobs. In 1991, bipartisan majorities in Congress voted to codify disparate impact in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The concept holds that it is illegal to impose barriers to employment if such practices have a discriminatory effect and have no relevance to the requirements of the job. The April 23 order declared that it is 'the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible.' The order argued that disparate impact has become a 'key tool' of a 'pernicious movement' that threatens meritocracy in favor of 'racial balancing' in the workforce. Craig Leen, a former top official at the Labor Department under the first Trump administration, said while the executive order take a more aggressive approach, it reflects long-standing conservative concerns that disparate impact liability encourages the assumption that any racial imbalance in the workforce is a result of discrimination. Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, said the Trump administration would rightfully 'focus on individual discrimination cases,' which she said are 'more factually sound, less susceptible to manipulation, and more closely hews to the original intent' of civil rights law. The EEOC filed the original Sheetz lawsuit after an eight-year investigation that arose from complaints filed by two job applicants. But following Trump's disparate impact order, the EEOC filed a motion District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to dismiss the lawsuit. The EEOC had sent letters to potential claimants notifying them of its intention to drop the case and urging them to act quickly if they wished to intervene. U.S. workers can pursue federal discrimination lawsuits on their own if the EEOC declines to take up their complaints but often don't because of the resources required. The EEOC declined to comment further on the case. One of the potential claimants, Kenni Miller, filed a motion to intervene late Thursday. Miller, 32, was hired as a shift supervisor at a Sheetz in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 2020, according to the motion filed by the law firm Outten & Golden, which represents workers in employment disputes, and the Public Interest Law Center. After working there for a month, Miller was told he failed the background check because of a felony drug conviction and was let go, according to the motion. According to the EEOC's lawsuit, Sheetz' policy of denying jobs who anyone who failed a background check resulted in 14.5% Black job applicants being denied employment, compared to 8% of white applicants. For Native American applicants, the rate was 13%, and for multiracial applicants, it was 13.5%. In court filings, Sheetz denied the allegations. Attorneys for the company, which is being represented by the law firm Littler, declined to comment further. The EEOC has not said how many potential claimants have been identified but Outten & Golden estimates the number to likely be in the thousands. Sheetz has more than 20,000 employees and operate at least 700 brand-store locations in Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, according to court documents. The Sheetz case echoes a 2018 lawsuit against Target claiming that the retailer's hiring process, which automatically rejected people with criminal backgrounds, disproportionately kept Black and Hispanic applicants from getting entry level jobs. Target agreed to pay more than $3.7 million to settle the lawsuit, and revised its policy so fewer applicants with criminal records would be disqualified. In 2020, Walmart agreed to pay $20 million and discontinue a preemployment strength test that the EEOC had claimed in a lawsuit unfairly excluded women from jobs at grocery distribution centers. And in one of the biggest sex discrimination cases in recent years, Sterling Jewelers, the parent company of Jared and Kay Jewelers, agreed in 2022 to pay $175 million to settle a long-fought lawsuit alleging that some 68,000 women had been subjected for years to unfair pay and promotion practices. The Justice Department, EEOC and other federal agencies have moved quickly to quash the use of disparate impact liability. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, for example, has moved to dismiss several Biden-era lawsuits against police departments in Kentucky and Minnesota, saying the cases claimed patterns of unconstitutional policing practices 'by wrongly equating statistical disparities with intentional discrimination.' In a May memo to employers, EEOC Acting Chief Andrea Lucas said the agency would deprioritize disparate impact cases. She also warned companies against using demographic data, which large companies are required gather and submit annually to the EEOC, to justify policies that favor any employees based on race or sex, something Lucas has long argued many well-intentioned DEI policies do in violation of Title VII. A Supreme Court ruling Thursday could help open the door for more complaints against DEI policies that Lucas has said will be her priority. Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chair now with Outten & Golden, said the pullback on federal enforcement of disparate impact risks dissuading companies from proactively examining hiring and other practices to ensure they do not discriminate. At the same time, Yang and nine other former Democratic EEOC commissioners and counsels have released a letter to employers emphasizing that the Trump's order does not change the law. 'Employers should not expect that they will have a free pass on disparate impact liability simply because the President has instructed federal agencies not to pursue enforcement of the law,' wrote the former EEOC officials. ________ The Associated Press' women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
