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Today's News AP The Wire Weather Classifieds Area Guide Crossword 
 The series Day one: Half a billion dollars a year is pouring into the Seminoles' casinos, but some people are profiting much more than others. Day two: While every Seminole now is getting handsome dividends from gambling revenues, millions in federal aid continue to go to the tribe. |
 In 1983, when Billie shot and killed a male Florida panther, one of about 30 remaining, he offered a unique defense. He had to kill the panther, he said, to become a medicine man. Fresh Water Fish and Game officials charged Billie with violating the Endangered Species Act. For three years, Billie's lawyers tussled with the state. They argued that the arrest violated his religious freedom, and that state hunting laws did not apply to tribal lands. Billie ultimately prevailed but his public image as a steward of the Everglades was tarnished. Years later, in 1993, Billie's hunting got him in trouble again, this time far from tribal lands, in Idaho's Clearwater National Forest. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service discovered that Billie and a handful of other Seminoles had been hunting with an outfitter who allowed clients to illegally kill animals. Some Seminoles had killed more elk than legally allowed and shot a black bear without a permit. Billie had illegally transported an elk across state lines; his girlfriend, Leslie Garcia, had shot a female elk without a license, removed the tenderloins and left the carcass in the woods to rot. From 1991 to 1993, the Seminoles had spent more than $80,000 of the tribe's money with the outfitter, Gordon Frost. Billie's lawyer blamed Frost for the violations. But Fish and Wildlife agent Paul Weyland disagrees. "They didn't come up here to play by the rules," Weyland said. "I know James Billie didn't. I know from his arrogant attitude, like he could do whatever he wanted, when we interviewed him." Billie, Garcia and several other Seminoles pleaded guilty to hunting infractions. Billie was fined $3,000 and given two years' probation, which forbade him from hunting outside Seminole reservations. * * * Money and patronage appear to be the key to Billie's 18-year grip on power in the Seminole tribe. Money has garnered the tribe political muscle in Washington. It pays for the lobbyists and public relations people who stand ready to defend the Seminoles' interests. Nor has Billie been averse to bending the rules to obtain the influence. In the early 1980s, the Miami Herald revealed the existence of an illegal lobbying fund. Billie was reimbursing tribal members and management company employees for making political donations, a practice that violates federal election laws.
"In those days we were dishing out campaign money," Billie says
today. " The Seminoles still give generously. Since 1988, the Seminole tribe and Pan American & Associates -- the company that manages the Tampa casino -- have donated $407,325 to federal and state campaigns. The Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., reported that the Seminoles spent $320,000 on federal lobbying last year, the second-highest of any tribe. But it's within the Seminole tribe that money appears to work most effectively for Billie. One example is the tribal loan program. If tribal members want to borrow money, they must seek an audience with Billie. No audience. No loan. In 1996, loans to tribal members amounted to $9.5-million, according to the Seminoles' budget. Billie said the loan program is necessary because many tribal members don't have credit histories or regular dealings with banks. "There's a couple of older men on our reservation that I've known all my life," Billie said. "One of them belongs to the Wind clan, another one belongs to the Panther clan. And we know he wasn't gonna pay that loan off, but we gave it to him. We don't give a damn if he pays it back. So he's driving a very decent 19, maybe a '96 or '95, some sort of pickup truck. He says he doesn't have any money this month. Can you give me $500? "We'll give him $500. And if somebody wants to politically challenge me on that, that was my decision."
On the Brighton reservation, there is another loan program, and it charges much higher interest rates. The fact that Billie allows it to persist shows how the interests of the Seminoles and political expediency can come into conflict. The Brighton loans are administered by Ellen Click Smith, the widow of Fred Smith Sr., a former tribal representative who died last year. Jim Talik, who was the tribe's business manager when Smith died, looked into the loan program after hearing it described as "loansharking." The interest rate charged by Ellen Click Smith "came out to be 52-percent annualized interest rate where employees were duped into thinking they had been given 10 percent," Talik said. Smith declined to answer questions about the loans. Billie told the Times that he had tried to kill the Brighton loan program 12 years ago, but "Fred Smith was a very powerful political person and their family kind of run the tribe over there." Fred Smith's death has not changed Billie's attitude. "You gotta remember now, I'm voted in by some of the people that's on that reservation, so boy that group growled and protected it. So we just left it alone." Billie's biggest political trump card is the monthly gambling dividend. The checks first started in 1983, with each Seminole receiving $300 a year. Campaigning for re-election in 1983, Billie promised to raise the dividend to $1,000 a year. He won easily. The dividend stayed at $1,000 for 10 years. But in 1994, a year before another election, it was raised to $1,000 a month, or $12,000 annually. Billie won in a landslide. Earlier this year, the tribal council voted to double the dividend, to $2,000 a month. That would cost the tribe $30-million more a year. Just last week, tribal leaders partly reversed that decision, lowering monthly dividends from $2,000 to $1,500 beginning in January. Comptroller Ted Boyd had called the original proposal to increase the dividend to $2,000 a month "an invitation to financial catastrophe" because of the uncertainty surrounding the legality of the video slot machines that provide most of the tribe's gambling revenues. Billie opposed the increase, too, but decided to vote for it. "We are politicians," Billie told the Times. "When some a--hole stands up and says, "We're gonna give it out,' and he's got a second, and for us to say no is politically suicide . . . "I mean to be chief for the rest of my life, until somebody beats me."
Subsequent coverage:
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