The tribe runs the sprawling Mohegan Sun casino, halfway between New York City and Boston, which earned more than $1.3 billion in gross revenues in 2009. Each tribe member receives a cut of the profits, a number a tribal official said was “less than $30,000” per capita per year. The stimulus money is a loan from a U.S. Department of Agriculture rural development program that is meant to help communities of less than 20,000 people that have been “unable to obtain other credit at reasonable rates and terms and are unable to finance the proposed project from their own resources.”

Lynn Malerba, chairwoman of the Mohegan Tribal Council, defended the award of the stimulus loan to the tribe, and said that every member of Connecticut’s seven-member Congressional delegation except one had provided assistance in securing the funds. “The whole Connecticut delegation, I think aside from [Rep.] Jim Himes, who was traveling, sent a letter in support.”