Gaming Panel Poised To Accept Status Quo Anti-Gambling Member Appears Ready To Switch Camps, Agree To Proposal

A solid but slim majority of Gov. Phil Batt’s Gaming Study Committee on Wednesday embraced a recommendation that tribal gambling statewide continue at present levels without further expansion.

While the interest of the hard-core opponents of gambling seemed piqued by the idea of maintaining the status quo, the conditions they wanted to impose on it - primarily a deadline for eventual elimination of all gambling in the state including the lottery - were unacceptable to their colleagues.

“That’s once again telling the tribes how to run their business,” Episcopal Bishop John Thornton said. “If they want to have gaming into the third millennium, if they want to lose their money, that’s fine with me.”

It was the declaration by Thornton that would appear to shift him from the anti-gambling bloc that comprised half the 12-member panel to the other half fully supporting the tribal proposal for recommending the status quo.

Strident gambling critic Stanley Crow acknowledged that a recommendation for the status quo would be acceptable but only if a distinct, irrevocable line would be created that clearly precluded any further expansion of reservation gambling and guaranteed a shift from casino operations to other means of energizing tribal economies.

“There’s so much empathy in the population for the tribes that there is a large portion of the people who don’t want to cut off the tribes,” Crow admitted. “The problem I would have is that any line the state draws would have difficulty holding.”

No votes were taken, and proposed details of a status quo recommendation will be developed over the next five weeks for consideration by the committee on Sept. 18. But Thornton’s statement indicated that seven of the 12 members backed the approach. Four of those seven represent the four tribes with gambling operations.

It reflects what the governor hoped could be the conclusion when he set the panel up this spring after a botched attempt to crackdown on what he maintained are illegal electronic pull-tab machines that have turned the casinos lucrative.

Having picked people evenly split on the gambling issue, Batt had acknowledged almost immediately that he did not expect the recommendations he will receive by Nov. 1 to be unanimous.

But there remained the question of just how much political impact the recommendation will have against a disagreeing minority report from nearly half its members.

Although the committee was charged with assessing the state’s policy on all gambling, the focus from the start was on the reservation casinos and what should be done about the electronic pull-tab machines.

The tribes have contended throughout that the computerized and electronic machines are nothing but virtual renditions of the games the state Lottery has been peddling for the past eight years and therefore legal under state and federal law.

David Matheson, gaming manager for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe who presented the status quo option, argued that ambiguity in the regulatory compacts negotiated a number of years ago with the state have created the current dispute.

In response to questions from other members, Matheson indicated the tribes had no problem with reopening the compacts to make them more definitive and to developing long-term plans for economic development on the reservations beyond today’s gambling operations that are generating hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in profits.

Reservation gambling, he said, “is a means to an end. It’s not an end. We were not born just to be gambling facility operators.”

A potential stumbling block is the U.S. Lottery site the Coeur d’Alenes are currently test marketing on the Internet. Batt has stridently objected to it.

Matheson said it should be handled separately from the existing casino operations, and a number of observers believe it will essentially disappear as an issue because of either opposition from two-thirds of the states or the decision by Nevada gambling interests to move in on it after the tribe works out all the bugs.

Within six weeks of announcing his intentions to crack down on the electronic pull-tab machines in reservation casinos, Batt backed away, citing the financial benefits the casinos have provided depressed reservation economies and the general public support for the tribal operations.

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