Opinion: Debate New Mexico gaming compacts

Wednesday, March 14, 2007  

Guy Clark is the executive director of the New Mexico 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 in Washington, D.C., ruled in Colorado River Indian Tribe versus the National Indian Gaming Commission that the federal government, through the gaming commission, has no authority to regulate tribal casino gambling and that tribal casino regulation was the responsibility of the tribes and the states where they exist.

Tribal regulation is self-regulation, which would be like Donald Trump regulating the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. New Mexico regulation over casinos under the current state compacts occupy only about four pages. The proposed new 38-year compacts would add about another five pages of actual state regulation.

The National Indian Gaming Commission regulation, called the Minimum Internal Control Standards, occupied about 84 pages of federal law. Those 84 pages of regulation are now nonoperational.

That means that, if the proposed 38-year compacts are approved, the combined state and federal regulation drops from about 88 pages to nine pages. That means that in New Mexico, state and federal regulation would drop by nearly 90 percent. That would present an open invitation for money laundering, embezzlement and slot-fixing."

Get the Story:
Guy Clark: Let's debate casino compacts (The Albuquerque Tribune 3/13)