By Guy C. Clark
Executive Director, N.M. Coalition Against Gambling
Because of a federal court ruling and inadequate proposed state regulation, New Mexico could get locked into 38-year tribal casino compacts with virtually no regulation.
In October of last year the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the federal government, through the National Indian Gaming Commission, has no authority to regulate tribal casino gambling and that such regulation was the responsibility of tribes and the states where they exist.
Federal regulation was the third tier of regulation of tribal casinos. The first tier is tribal regulation, and the second tier is state regulation.
Tribal regulation is self-regulation, which would be like Donald Trump regulating the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. New Mexico state regulation of tribal casinos occupies about four pages in the current compacts. The proposed new 38-year compacts would add about another five of actual state regulation.
The NIGC's regulations took up about 84 pages of federal law. Those 84 pages of regulation are now non-operational.
That means that if the proposed 38-year compacts are approved, the combined state and federal regulation drops from about 88 to nine pages— nearly 90 percent. That would present an open invitation for money-laundering, embezzling and slot-fixing.
The tribes and the governor's negotiators knew about the ruling while they were negotiating the compacts. The Legislative Committee on Compacts knows about it, because I testified to that point Feb. 16. Attorney General Gary King knew about it before he testified to the committee on Feb. 23 but apparently didn't feel it was important enough to warn of the consequences. None of these people did anything to prevent the compacts from being sent on to the governor with totally inadequate regulation. None of them seem to think poor regulation is a problem.
Regulators don't agree. NIGC Chairman Phil Hogan was quoted after the ruling: "Without independent oversight the growing gaming industry could become fraught with corruption."
I talked with the state gambling representative (the one and only New Mexico regulator), and he agreed that this situation would greatly diminish regulation of tribal gambling in New Mexico.
Other states have far better regulation. We now have about four pages of state regulation for tribal casinos. Arizona has dozens of pages. We have one state gambling representative who visits all 16 casinos. Arizona has dozens of regulators who work side-by-side with tribal regulators all day, every day that they are open. The Arizona Gaming Control Board has authority to revoke casino licenses and issue penalties for violations. New Mexico can only take violators to arbitration, where the final outcome is very vague.
This is an enormous regulatory problem! If the proposed compacts are approved by the Legislature, the state will likely be stuck with totally inadequate casino regulation for 38 years. The Legislature needs to hear from its citizens that they should reject the proposed compacts. In the future we can work on vastly improved regulation in compacts that don't extend their life for generations.
I hereby challenge the governor's negotiators, Hilary Tompkins and Paul Bardacke, to a 90-minute debate on the merits of the proposed tribal gambling compacts.
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