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April 25, 2007 Secretary Dirk Kempthorne Dear Secretary Kempthorne, On April 24, Governor Richardson sent you the tribal gambling compacts that he negotiated with eight of the New Mexico tribes. Those compacts were subsequently approved by the legislature. He feels that five more tribes may sign on in coming months. We would strongly recommend that you reject these compacts. As you are well aware, the Washington, DC Circuit Court ruled last October in the case of Colorado River Indian Tribe v. National Indian Gaming Commission that the federal government through NIGA had no authority to regulate Class III tribal casino gambling operations. The ruling stated that over 80 pages of Minimum Internal Control Standards (MICS), the regulations covering the nuts and bolts details of nearly every aspect of tribal gambling, would become inoperative. It also means that the dozens of NIGA employees that traveled throughout the country to carry out that regulation had no tools or authority to function following that decision. The Governor’s negotiators, Paul Bardacke and Hillary Tompkins, knew about the DC Court ruling while they were negotiating with the tribes. However, they only managed to add about five pages of regulation to the previous regulatory provisions, making about nine total pages of state regulation. You will discover that it is very superficial regulation and does not cover operating details of tribal casino operation adequately to compensate for the massive loss of federal regulation. One example is that while the negotiators brag about the new provision that allows the state representative to view live output from the casino central computer, there are no provisions similar to the federal MICS that provide for the security of that computer. Even a fairly talented high school hacker could program a tribal casino computer to spew out altered data. The regulations provide for only ONE state representative to visit the 16 tribal casinos in New Mexico and he has no enforcement authority at all. Disputes can only be taken to arbitration in the event of violation of the compacts. These regulatory problems were also spelled out in legislative committee hearings, and before the whole legislature, but the House and Senate both voted to approve the compacts by a wide margin. A testimony to the power of campaign contributions. In a March 14, 2007
editorial in the Albuquerque Tribune, staff writer Steve Lawrence
wrote concerning the negotiated compacts: “Bugsy Siegel was the guy who
turned Las Vegas, Nev., into the gambling Mecca it is today. He did
pretty much what he wanted in what was then pretty much trackless
desert. Made a bunch of money. Built a casino or two. Finally got killed
for his trouble. The New Mexico Coalition Against Gambling is asking you to reject the New Mexico compact amendments. There are seven years before the current compacts expire, so there is no reason to rush into flawed compacts that would be an albatross around the neck of the people of New Mexico for 30 years. It is entirely possible that the US Supreme Court could overturn the DC Circuit Court and reinstate federal regulation of tribal casino gambling in coming months or years. It is also possible that the US Congress could rewrite the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and remedy this situation. But if New Mexico is unwilling to wait for the federal government to get back in the regulatory business, the state tribal gambling compacts should contain very detailed, specific, nuts and bolts regulations to prevent the “corruption” that chairman Hogan predicted. Please reject the flawed New Mexico Indian Gaming Compacts. Cordially, Dr. Guy C. Clark, executive director |
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