Menominee pledge to hire locally
County residents would get first priority for casino jobs
BY JOE POTENTE KENOSHA NEWS
Seeking to stave off concerns that a proposed Kenosha casino would be staffed heavily by workers from Illinois, the Menominee Nation has adopted a local hiring preference policy for the $808 million complex it hopes to build at Dairyland Greyhound Park. Meanwhile, a Menominee official said the tribe is continuing to wait for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to release an environmental impact statement draft, which is the next step in the project’s federal approval process. Menominee Chairman Michael Chapman said the hiring policy, announced Tuesday, sets a goal to have residents of Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee counties constitute at least 80 percent of the facility’s workforce. The tribe estimates that if fully developed, the casino complex could directly and indirectly employ roughly 5,000 individuals. “I wanted to demonstrate that our commitment really is to Kenosha and Racine and Milwaukee and to southeastern Wisconsin in general, but mostly to Kenosha,” Chapman said. “They’re the ones who lent the support to the project in city and county referendums, so I thought this was a way to pay homage to that support.” The policy, which was reviewed by the Menominee Legislature and adopted by the tribe’s Kenosha Gaming Authority, gives first preference for jobs at the facility to Kenosha County residents. Residents of Racine and Milwaukee counties would receive second and third preference, respectively, and fourth preference would go to Wisconsin residents living outside of these counties. Despite speculation, Chapman said it was never the tribe’s intent to employ an Illinois resident-dominated work-
force. Nor does Chapman believe tribal members will make a widespread migration from the reservation in northeastern Wisconsin to fill the Kenosha jobs. While tribal hiring preference language will remain in the intergovernmental agreement between the Menominee and the city and county of Kenosha, Chapman said he does not foresee a problem in meeting the 80 percent local hiring threshold. Chapman also said the tribe will work with potential retail and commercial leaseholders in the proposed complex to encourage local hiring. Observers of Kenosha’s labor market welcomed news of the new policy. “My personal reaction is anything that gets people hired that live in Kenosha is a great thing,” said John Milisauskas, manager of the Kenosha County Job Center. Milisauskas noted that 44 percent of people in the labor force in Kenosha live here but do not work here. Ronald J. Frederick, president of the Kenosha AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, said he was happy to hear of the policy, though the best news will come when the project receives federal approval. Frederick and other local labor leaders were strong backers of the project before a November 2004 advisory referendum. Kenosha County voters said “yes” to the casino by a 12 percent margin in that election. “I think it’s great,” Frederick said. “Everybody’s got their differences about gambling, but jobs are jobs.” Regarding the wait for the environmental impact statement draft from the BIA, Chapman declined to venture a guess of when the document will be ready. After that is released, public comments will be solicited before the federal review can move forward. Project officials had previously anticipated this would occur sometime during the summer. Chapman said he believes the delay from the BIA has occurred because the Menominee casino application came into the federal organization at roughly the same time as other, unrelated applications. “What we didn’t anticipate is that the bureaucracy moves at a much slower pace,” Chapman said.