The New Mexico Senate recently voted 35-7 to approve a gaming compact with the Navajo Nation, the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache tribes and Acoma Pueblo. The Jemez Pueblo also signed on to the compact, although currently it doesn’t have a casino. The compacts are scheduled to expire at the end of June. Now the House will consider the compact, which the tribes and Governor Susana Martinez have negotiated for three years. State Senator Carlos Cisneros said, “Certainly the art of good negotiation is the ability to make concessions. Clearly, not everybody is happy, but that’s just the way it is. In real life, we tend to understand that when you negotiate a contract, there’s going to be give and take.”
State Senator Clemente Sanchez, chairman of the compacts committee, said the proposed compact would increase revenues to the state during the next two decades compared to the existing compacts. In 2014, tribes operating New Mexico casinos reported more than $731 million in net winnings and paid the state more than $66 million under revenue-sharing agreements. Under the proposed compact, revenue sharing would top an estimated $77 million in 2019, Sanchez said.
Laguna Pueblo Governor Virgil Siow said he believed the compact proposed this year is “better and stronger” than previous ones. “Except for our obvious concerns, the compact addresses all of the issues that were raised by the tribes in the last two legislative sessions. For those reasons, we are now able to offer our support,” Siow stated.
The main issue of concern to the Laguna Pueblo was a provision in the proposed compact allowing tribes of more than 75,000 population to build a new casino in six years. Only the Navajo Nation meets that standard. Laguna Lieutenant Governor David Martinez and Tesuque Peublo Governor Milton Herrera both expressed objections to basing new casinos on population at a recent nine-hour meeting of the Legislature’s Committee on Compacts.
Prior to the Senate vote, Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly told lawmakers, “The importance of passing this gaming compact cannot be stressed enough. Thousands of jobs are at stake for the Nation and we implore our state legislators to get this compact passed for the benefit of all New Mexicans. The Navajo Nation has negotiated in good faith a gaming compact that would serve the needs of the Navajo Nation and the state.”
Tribal leaders hope lawmakers will approve the compact before the legislature adjourns March 21. The compact then would have to be approved by the U.S. Interior Department.
Meanwhile, a bill by two New Mexico legislators would extend the privileges that gaming tribes have to racetracks that have slot machines.
Two legislators, Senator Phil Griego and Senator John Ryan have sponsored a bill to give racinos equality with Indian casinos when it comes to any form of gaming.
They would, like gaming tribes, be able to extend credit to players and offer them amenities such as complimentary meals and rooms. They would also be able to stay open 24/7.
The bipartisan bill would allow racetracks the same privileges extended to them that a recent compact negotiated between Governor Susana Martinez gives tribes. If the compact is ratified, and if Griego’s bill becomes law, whatever provisions are kept in the compact would be extended to racetracks.
The new compact allows tribes whose compacts do not expire this June to sign on. It expires in 2037.
Griego declared last week, “We want to do whatever we can do to assist the tracks.”
Some tribes think the bill goes to far. Debra Haaland, tribal administrator for the San Felipe Pueblo last week told the Albuquerque Journal, “It was supposed to be a parity bill. We’re just feeling it goes a little beyond that.”
