From the Associated Press — Governor Gretchen Whitmer has rejected a proposal for a $180 million off-reservation casino in western Michigan that a tribe has been working toward for over a decade. Whitmer’s rejection of the proposal Wednesday came after the U.S. Department of Interior rejected her request to postpone her deadline for deciding whether to allow the project to proceed. Whitmer wrote in a letter to the U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that the department had put her in an “impossible position.” The Little River Band of Ottawa Indians had hoped to build the casino on an 87-acre lot near Muskegon that the tribe bought in 2008. Because the site isn’t on the tribe’s reservation, the casino needed federal and state approval.
