The Government Accountability Office (GAO) plans to release a comprehensive report on Indian Gaming early next year. Several members of Congress who hope to amend the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) want to see that report before they act.
According to Anne-Marie Fennell, who testified before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs last month the report will be sweeping in its scope and much more comprehensive than previous studies the GAO has done on Indian gaming. The last time the GAO did such a study was in 1998, when it took data from five states.
It will look closely at how the Department of the Interior complies with IGRA in its review of state tribal gaming compacts, how the industry is regulated by states and tribes and at the job the National Indian Gaming Commission does in regulating Indian gaming.
As part of its work the GAO visited several states that have Indian gaming, looked in on several gaming tribes and delved into NIGC data. It noted that Bureau of Indian Affairs has approved of 78 percent of the tribal state gaming compacts it has reviewed in the past 16 years and that as of 2012 420 tribal casinos were operated in 28 states. Even so, only 40 percent of tribes operate casinos.
Fennell told the lawmakers, “We hope to provide a broad description and evaluation of the regulation and oversight of Indian gaming in our final report.”
Senator Jon Tester, chairman of the senate committee, was one of several senators, include IGRA co-author John McCain, who requested the GAO report. McCain has said that he doesn’t think Indian gaming is regulated enough. He is particularly interested in the issue of off-reservation casinos, something that opponents call “reservation shopping.”
