LEGISLATIVE FINANCE COMMITTEE HEARINGS ON TRACKS, TRIBES AND LOTTERY
This morning, members of Stop Predatory Gambling New Mexico, including chairman Clark, witnessed the Legislative Finance Committee hear reports on the racetrack casinos, the tribal casinos and the state lottery.
Most of the track meeting was taken up with discussion about doping the horses and the penalties thereof. We still have a high kill rate on our ponies.
The tribal report was pretty intense. There are five tribes looking to renew their compacts, including the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and Jicarilla Apache tribes, and the Pojoaque and Tesuque Pueblos. Two new tribes, the Zuni and Jemez Pueblos are looking to obtain initial compacts.
Mention was made of the Pojoaque Pueblo lawsuits against the state, and the fact that their effort to get the Department of Interior to force their compact on the state had been at least temporarily derailed by the local Federal District court.
All seven of these tribes have to have compacts by July of this year, or they are without compacts, and any gambling operations could be shut down by the Feds. So the ones interested in negotiating with the state must have legislative approval during this legislative session. The governor’s negotiators are working with the cooperative tribes to try to get proposed compacts to the tribal compact committee before the legislature begins, so that the committee can give the legislature a recommendation at the start of the legislature.
One interesting element of all of this is that if the seven new tribes opt to accept the 2007 compacts, they need to negotiate it with and get approval from the legislature and governor before sending it to Interior. However, if they come up with new compacts, the seven tribes that are signators to the 2007 compacts could adopt one of the new compacts simply by taking it to the Department of the Interior and getting them to sign off, and skip negotiations with the state.
The lottery presented many new ideas to increase sales and efficiency. The worst, but most productive, was to allow people to use tablets, laptops and smart phones to play the lottery. If this is made into law the gambling industry will follow up to get casino-style gambling available to New Mexicans via their portable devices. We will fight this above all else on the agenda.
SPGNM’s basic take on the lottery proposals is that they gave better business practices to promote a toxic product. The daily voice of the state to New Mexicans is not and will NOT be: Save for the future; get improved education and training to make yourself more employable, or live providently within your means. The daily voice of the state to New Mexicans WIll be: You could get lucky; It could happen to you; You can’t win if you don’t play.
It’s time for the government (tribal and state) to get out of the
