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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.

The tribes knew about the federal ruling, because the news burned through Indian country in about two days. The governor's negotiators, Hillary Tompkins and Paul Bardacke, knew about the ruling while they were negotiating the compacts. The state Legislative Committee on Compacts knows about it, because I testified to that point on Feb. 16. Attorney General Gary King, knew about it before he testified to the committee on Feb. 23, but he didn't feel it was important enough to warn them of the consequences.

None of these people did anything to prevent the compacts from being sent on to the governor with totally inadequate regulation on Feb. 24. None of them seem to think poor regulation is a problem.

Regulators don't agree. Phil Hogan, the chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission, is quoted after the ruling as saying, "Without independent oversight, the growing gaming industry could become fraught with corruption."

Other states have far better regulation. We now have about four pages of state regulations for tribal casinos. Arizona has dozens of pages of state regulations. 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 the casinos 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 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, Tompkins and Bardacke, to a 90-minute debate on the merits of the proposed tribal gambling compacts. Location and time can be determined after acceptance of the challenge.