The Pojoaque Pueblo has gone to the courts again to fight for $10.1 million that was originally set aside while the tribe’s original legal battle with the state of New Mexico was resolved—and which was seized by the federal government in March.
The Pueblo, which operates the Buffalo Thunder Casino and Resort and Cities of Gold Casino says that it should get the seized funds in part because it lost $9 million in declining revenues during its dispute with the state when it refused to sign a new tribal state gaming compact in 2015—and the state pressured its vendors to not do business with what it claimed was an illegal gambling operation.
The original compact expired in 2015 and the pueblo refused to sign the compact that other New Mexico gaming tribes agreed to. The tribe claimed the state government of Governor Susana Martinez was asking for too large a share of slot machine profits. The compacts increased the state’s share from 8 percent to 9 percent, with the rates ramping up over the next two decades. The tribe also wanted to lower the minimum age for gambling and lift restrictions on serving alcohol, among other areas.
Concurrent with that legal battle, the tribe filed a separate complaint that the state was unfairly influence casino vendors to not doing business with the tribe because of the tribe’s status as a legal casino being in limbo. In February 2017 a federal court ruled that the state was allowed to contact vendors because without a compact the tribe was operating illegally.
That’s when revenues began to decline sharply, according to the tribe’s court filing. The tribe’s lost some of its more profitable machines, such that the tribe lost $8.84 million. The tribe claims the vendors removed the games that were “bigger, flashier, have eye-catching beacons and other features, and are immediately noticeable by patrons as new and different from anything they’ve seen before” according to tribal enterprises CEO Michael Allegeier. The removal of these machines caused the casinos to lose $750,000 every month for eight months, he testified.
In August 2017 the tribe gave up and signed the same compact the other tribes had signed. Meantime it had operated for two years without a compact.
The current legal battle is over $10 million that the U.S. attorney of that time, Damon Martinez, required that the tribe put into a trust account while the battle over the compact raged. Martinez promised not to prosecute the tribe for operating without a compact as long as the funds continued to be collected.
With that battle over, the tribe wants its money back that were collected between 2015 and 2017. The state claims the same funds, which the federal government regards as profits from an illegally conducted gaming operation. The newest U.S. Attorney, John Anderson, has filed a forfeiture complaint to keep the money.
The tribe says the money should be used for the benefit of its members, including economic development. The state argues that to do so will mean that the tribe will pay nothing to the state for the two years it illegally operated without a compact.
It argues that in its original agreement with the U.S. Attorney that Martinez required “the Pueblo and the State of New Mexico reach an agreement over the disposition of the Trust Funds” after the compact issue was resolved. The tribe has tried to reach such an agreement with the state, without success, and after five meetings says the pueblo’s filing.
The tribe claims it has offered concessions, such as distributing a large share of the money to community organizations and emergency services in the Pojoaque Valley. Or even splitting the funds down the middle with New Mexico.
Instead the state demanded additional payments of $1.1 million to its general fund.
The tribe took the state and the federal government to Pojoaque Tribal Court, which ruled that the pueblo be paid the money. The tribe says the federal court should recognize the tribal court’s ruling in the spirit of “comity” between different political entities.
