POJOAQUE AGR
EES TO SIGN ON TO GAMBLING COMPACTS WITH STATE
A little over two years since their gambling compacts with the state of New Mexico expired, the Pueblo of Pojoaque finally agreed to the terms that the other gambling tribes had already agreed to. Pojoaque sued the state, saying that the state didn’t negotiate in “good faith,” since it required them to increase their revenue sharing beyond the original 8%. They went even further in challenging the whole concept of “revenue sharing.”
The Pojoaque lawsuits in State and Federal courts finally brought the Interior Department into the fray, and under the Obama administration, the department was working on compacts with the pueblo that would exclude the state in the process. This would be in violation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which could have made for some more interesting lawsuits.
Recently, the 9th Circuit Federal Court in Denver approved lower court decisions that allowed the State of New Mexico to forbid vendors from supplying the Pojoaque casinos. That, and the likelihood that the currently constituted U.S. Supreme Court would probably side with the state, probably pushed Pojoaque into accepting the current state/pueblo compacts.
An article in the Friday Albuquerque Journal on the story can be read by clicking here.
Now Pojoaque is in the boat with all the other gambling tribes, and they will at least have to make a semblance of complying with its provisions. In Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and commercial casinos across the country, a team of a dozen or more FBI agents can show up at a casino at 2:00 am, hook into their computers, grab their books and collect real-time records of the income and expenses of the casinos. In New Mexico, there is provision for ONE state representative to collect gambling data from twenty-eight casinos, although over recent years, even that position has not always been filled. And that representative receives casino-generated reports, not subject to state standard auditing procedures.
Now Pojoaque can legally join in the process that causes bankruptcy, divorce, alcoholism, suicide, increased criminal activity, political corruption, and economic inequality and decline with the other gambling entities in the state.
It is time for the government to get out of the predatory gambling racket.
