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There is no such thing as the win-win-win in gambling that Gov. Scott Walker desired — there has to be at least one loser at the table.

The Menominee tribe became the big loser Friday when Walker rejected the tribe's latest bid to open an off-reservation casino in Kenosha.

The governor's action appears to put an end to the yearslong effort to open a casino in the closed Dairyland Greyhound Park by the impoverished Menominee tribe.

"It is our belief that this project would have improved the lives of the nearly 9,000 members of the Tribe," Laurie Boivin, the tribe's chairwoman, said in a statement. "Instead, one tribe — the Forest County Potawatomi — and one goal of Governor Walker — the presidency — has led to a no for our people."

The winners were the Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk tribes, which both fought the Menominee efforts to open an $800 million casino complex that would have likely siphoned off revenue from their casinos.

Walker's decision gave the state budget a boost. The Potawatomi Friday paid the state the approximately $25 million it owed since the middle of last year.

As governor, Walker has unilateral authority to approve or kill any proposal for an off-reservation casino in Wisconsin.

Throughout the casino fight — which included saturating the airwaves with commercials paid for by advocates and opponents of the Kenosha casino — Walker said he was looking for "a win-win-win." But in a report that Mike Huebsch, secretary of administration, sent the governor Thursday, he pointed out a truism known by every gambler: "It is important to understand that a win-win-win scenario is not possible."

Walker, who is exploring a presidential campaign, put the kibosh on the casino one day before he heads to Iowa, an important state in the presidential sweepstakes. Some Iowa conservatives have urged the governor to veto the Kenosha casino.

Walker said his presidential aspirations had no bearing on his decision. Rather, he put the onus for killing the proposal on his Democratic predecessor, former Gov. Jim Doyle. Walker said that his administration had been working to strike a deal that would have potentially allowed a casino in both cities while protecting taxpayers.

"I don't think that anyone could say that we didn't act in good faith to try to get to a good point to this," Walker told reporters in Milwaukee Friday. "But in the end, what it really boils down to is that there are more than a hundred million reasons why we had to make this decision and they all fall firmly on the lap of" Doyle.

Doyle did not respond to requests for comment.

Walker was referring to a 2005 gaming compact with the Potawatomi that calls for the tribe to be reimbursed for any loss of business resulting from the opening of a Kenosha casino. The Potawatomi operate the state's largest and most lucrative tribal casino in the state, raking in about $400 million annually.

The Menominee tribe has said taxpayers had nothing to fear because the tribe would cover any losses incurred at competing casinos. A compact signed by the tribe this week mandated the payments and late Thursday, the Menominee offered to put up a bond of $200 million to $250 million to ensure it could make the payments. The bond, however, is not included in the compact.

The Ho-Chunk reached an agreement with the state to lower its annual gaming fee — currently about $12 million annually — by the amount of business lost to a Kenosha casino. If the revenue decline exceeds the amount of the fee, then the governor would seek an appropriation from the Legislature to cover the Ho-Chunk losses.

Fearing that a new competitor would hurt its own off-reservation casino in Milwaukee, the Potawatomi tribe has spent millions of dollars fighting the Kenosha casino.

A consultant study of the Menominee proposal left little doubt the Kenosha casino, located near the Illinois state line, would siphon business from Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk.

But the Nathan Associates report also noted the positive impact of a casino that would have been developed and managed by Hard Rock International, a firm owned by Florida's Seminole tribe.

"The positive impacts of the proposed...casino in Kenosha and Menominee counties overwhelmingly outweigh the negative impacts in Milwaukee County and the Ho-Chunk Nation because the proposed Kenosha casino will create more new economic activity than it will cannibalize," Huebsch wrote in the report summarizing the consultants' reports.

Huebsch noted, however, that the Nathan report does "not necessarily reflect the risk factors outlined" in Huebsch's report — an apparent reference to the fear that taxpayers would have to cover losses to the Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk tribes. Nathan's projections did not account for the possibility of Potawatomi winning litigation that would ultimately make taxpayers responsible for any revenue drops at rival casinos, Huebsch wrote.

Huebsch also noted that "given the loss of revenue at Potawatomi Hotel & Casino (22%) there would be negative economic and fiscal impacts in Milwaukee County." The report said the Ho-Chunk tribe would see its revenue fall by 16%.

Nathan predicted that in 2021 a Kenosha casino would take $138 million in gaming revenue from the Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi casinos.

When the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the Menominee casino plan in August 2013, it appeared as if Walker was going to quickly reject the proposal. At the time, he said he would approve the casino only if all 11 Wisconsin tribes approved it — an impossible mission considering the vehement opposition from the Potawatomi and the Ho-Chunk.

But the prospects brightened considerably after Hard Rock entered the picture.

In recent weeks, the tide seemed to turn against the project after Huebsch and an attorney for Walker said an agreement with the Potawatomi could put the state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Potawatomi this week sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the hope of requiring the agency to approve an agreement the tribe had with the state that would have had taxpayers ultimately responsible for covering any lost revenue at the Milwaukee casino. The BIA earlier this month had rejected that agreement.

The Potawatomi last year withheld its $25 million annual payment to the state because it was afraid that Walker might approve the Kenosha casino. If that occurred, the tribe said the state could be required to return past gaming fee payments that it had made.

Huebsch's fear that taxpayers could be on the hook for "hundreds of millions" of dollars stemmed from fear that the Potawatomi would win a lawsuit requiring that the state refund the fees the tribe had paid to the state in past years.

Penny Coleman, former general counsel for the National Indian Gaming Commission, said the Potawatomi lawsuit had little chance for success.

But Coleman — who has done work for Hard Rock — noted that the Menominee would also have little chance of winning a court challenge if it chose to sue Walker over his denial of the Kenosha casino.

In a statement, Kenosha County Executive Jim Kreuser said, "Kenosha County will be fine with or without the casino, but there is no denying that the casino would have brought an even bigger economic boost to the Kenosha County community, the region and the state."

Kreuser added that the tribe, unions, local legislators and others who supported the casino "fought a good fight, but now we need to come together to move the community forward without this project."

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), an outspoken supporter of the Kenosha casino, said it appeared to him that the Menominee tribe had taken adequate steps to minimize the state's risk had Walker approved the project.

"There are going to be a lot of angry and disappointed people," he said.

Journal Sentinel reporters Jason Stein in Madison, Rob Gebelhoff in Sturtevant and Lee Bergquist in Milwaukee contributed to this report.