* October of 2019…

The Forest County Potawatomi tribe of Wisconsin is suing the city of Waukegan, Illinois, for rejecting its proposal to build a casino on the site of a ghost shopping mall in the city. […]

Last week, the city council rubber-stamped bids from the tribe’s three competitors — Full House Resorts, North Point Casino, and Rivers Casino Waukegan – sending them to the Illinois Gaming Board, which will make the final decision. But the Potawatomi project didn’t make the cut. […]

The report in question, complied by Johnson Consultants, asserted the tribe was offering $5.6 million to buy the plot of land on which the casino would be built, the lowest of the four bids.

But the tribe argues it didn’t quote any specific price for the land in its application at all, and neither was it required to. It merely stated it would pay within 15 percent of the plot’s market value.

The tribe later submitted supplementary materials emphasizing it was prepared to pay $12 million for the plot, which was not included in the Johnson Consultants report.

According to the lawsuit, the report rated the Potawatomi as first or second in every other category except for the purchase price, but ultimately ranked the entire proposal last – a decision the tribe describes as “inexplicable.”

* November of 2021…

The owners of the Potawatomi Hotel and Casino claim that former [Waukegan] Mayor Sam Cunningham manipulated the bidding for a future Waukegan casino to favor the gambling company of former state Sen. Michael Bond. […]

The Potawatomi group pointed to the significant financial contributions that Bond, CEO of Tap Room Gaming, had provided to councilmembers who voted in line with Cunningham’s request.

In the final weeks of the 2017 mayoral campaign, Bond directed more than $50,000 to Cunningham. Then, ahead of the 2019 City Council election, Bond and his network of companies and committees gave $250,000 to candidates he backed, essentially fully bankrolling four candidates who won seats.

According to the tribal casino entity, city officials favoring Bond’s North Point proposal also selected Neil Bluhm’s Rush Street Gaming/Rivers Casino for consideration by the state gambling board as a result of Rivers’ teaming up with Waukegan Gaming LLC, the entity that had been selected by the city in an unsuccessful 2004 effort to bring a casino to town and had filed suit seeking the new license.

“Based on Bond’s campaign largesse and personal connection to Cunningham, North Point indeed had the inside track. But given public scrutiny of the Bond connection, the City also favored Full House as a relatively weak competitor that could ‘quash’ the (accurate) perception of bias toward North Point,” Potawatomi attorneys alleged. “The selection of Rivers does nothing to negate this inference, because Rivers punched its own ticket in the form of damaging information it unearthed in the Waukegan Gaming litigation. Hence Cunningham’s directive to send North Point, Full House and Rivers, but not Potawatomi, to the Illinois Gaming Board.”

Except, the Illinois Gaming Board wound up choosing Full House, which was granted a temporary operating license earlier this year and a sports betting license in June.

* But now…

The cards have already been dealt in the Waukegan casino game, but a state appellate court has issued a ruling that could bring back to the table a spurned bidder that has long complained of a “rigged” contest for the coveted gambling license.

That means the north suburban casino selection process could end up being reshuffled, even though Las Vegas-based Full House Resorts has been open for betting business at a temporary gambling mecca in the city for almost six months.

Illinois’ First District Appellate Court sided Friday with the Forest County Potawatomi Community in their long-running court battle with Waukegan, where the Native American tribe has contended officials didn’t give them a fair shake in 2019 while considering casino operators that were then forwarded for a final selection by state gambling regulators. […]

“Potawatomi Casino pursued a significant business opportunity to fairly compete for a casino license, and where that opportunity was denied due to the city’s alleged failure to perform the process lawfully, there is a distinct and palpable injury,” Justice Raymond Mitchell wrote in the decision.

The ruling is here. The case was sent back to the trial court.