Gov. Scott Walker Credit: Journal Sentinel files

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Gov. Scott Walker signaled he wouldn't pursue any new bills on public or private unions in the coming legislative session and wouldn't touch the issue of right-to-work legislation until it had been debated as part of an election.

In a meeting with editors and reporters of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Friday, the Republican governor also set a high standard for approving a potential off-reservation tribal casino in Kenosha if it first received the needed go-ahead from the federal government.

Walker said he told legislative leaders from his party that he saw more labor legislation as a "huge distraction" from his core priorities of boosting the state's economy, improving schools and training workers for needed jobs. He said it would hurt job growth in the state to have another round of bitter debate like the one that accompanied his mea sure in March 2011 to repeal most collective bargaining for most public workers, leading to the unsuccessful effort to recall him this year.

"This is not a wink and a nod thing. I'm not saying, 'I'm not going to push it but you guys go ahead,' " Walker said of lawmakers.

"Even in terms of tweaking collective bargaining or anything else like that, I think that all those things open the door for that kind of debate and that kind of intensity."

The topic has been again in the news this week as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed bills making Wisconsin's neighbor the 24th state in the country to have a right-to-work law prohibiting unions and managers from requiring employees at a given workplace to pay union dues. Like Walker, Snyder had previously said right to work was not a priority, but he abruptly reversed himself after the November elections. Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, where right to work also passed this year, made a similar shift in his position.

Pointing to those other Rust Belt Republicans and Walker's past support for right to work as a state lawmaker, Wisconsin Democrats have called on the governor to say definitively he would veto right to work.

"It's going to take a lot more than some squishy language from the governor . . . before we trust him. Until he says firmly that he'd veto it, this is obviously something on his mind," said Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee).

Supporters of right-to-work legislation say it provides freedom for employees and prosperity for states by attracting businesses. Critics say it handicaps unions by depriving them of the financial resources they need to defend their members' rights in the workplace and in the political process.

Walker said Michigan was a unique case because unions there had unsuccessfully pushed a voter referendum that would have made collective bargaining a protected part of the state constitution.

"(Snyder) felt the unions had overstepped their bounds and in doing so had opened the door for him and other people to take a second look at that issue. There's nothing like that in Wisconsin," Walker said.

"If we ever had a (right-to-work) discussion like that in the future, it's something we'd have going into an election."

Walker on Friday also said he'd set an extremely high bar for approving a casino for the Menominee tribe in Kenosha. The tribe already has a small casino on its reservation northwest of Green Bay.

All proposals for off-reservation casinos in the state must be approved first by the federal Department of the Interior and then Walker, who said his criteria would be similar to those laid out in a May letter from his administration to an Interior Department official.

First, Walker said a proposed casino would need to have the support of the local community - something Kenosha arguably has demonstrated in past voter referendums.

"Second, I've got to have some consensus among the sovereign (tribal) nations, which is probably the most difficult," Walker said.

The most intense opposition comes from the Forest County Potawatomi tribe, which operates a casino in Milwaukee that had a net win of about $368 million from gamblers last year but argues that a Kenosha casino would cut its revenue by $150 million a year.

Walker hinted the two sides would have to reach an understanding before he would approve a casino, such as a deal that gave the Potawatomi a financial stake in the Menominee casino. On Friday, Ken Walsh, a lobbyist for the Potawatomi, declined to say if such a deal was possible but appeared to leave little room for it.

"The Potawatomi are opposed to this Kenosha application. It has a scandalous and corrupt history," he said.

"This was the application by Kenosha for the past eight years. If they haven't changed since then, I don't know why they would change today."

The third factor, Walker said, would be whether a new casino could be squared with 1993 advisory referendums in which voters supported the forms of gambling existing at the time but strongly opposed expansions of gambling.

"How do you honor that? Does that mean closing an operation on the Menominee (reservation)? We haven't really had a real measure of where the public is on that," Walker said.

Closing the casino in Keshena would keep the number of gambling establishments the same but would replace a small operation with a much larger one.

Wisconsin's casinos, like those throughout the nation, have been hit hard by the struggling economy. Their revenue fell between 2009 and 2011, though the amount the tribal governments paid the state under agreements with the state rose slightly to $52.1 million.

The Menominee tribe has been seeking a casino in Kenosha since the 1990s. At one stage, the efforts were spearheaded by Dennis Troha, a trucking magnate who was convicted in 2008 on charges of illegally funneling $100,000 in contributions to the campaign of then-Gov. Jim Doyle and other political funds. Troha is no longer involved in the project.