SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The California state Senate shot down a measure that would have provided $1.35 million in startup funding for the Gambling Control Commission appointed by Gov. Gray Davis.
Assembly Bill 66 failed on a final 20-10 vote, falling short of two-thirds majority or 27 votes needed to pass any funding measure in the California state Senate.
The funds were supposed to cover costs for the commission through the current fiscal year, which ends July 1 and those accumulated by the commission since it was created last August.
Sen. Jim Battin, R- La Quinta, led opposition to the bill and openly criticized Davis for refusing to sign any new compacts until a lawsuit challenging Proposition 1A is settled.
Card clubs initiated the lawsuit because they said they fear competition from American Indian casinos, challenging their exclusive right to operate slot machines and other gaming devices in the state.
This lawsuit is of special interest to tribes with compacts because gaming machines reportedly generate as much as 80 percent of casino profits.
The governor has signed 61 compacts to date and put nine additional requests for a compact on hold until the lawsuit is settled.
The commission had an initially approved budget of around $570,000 and claims it incurred further expenses and thus requested the budgetary increase from the California Assembly.
“It is outrageous to me that the governor, unilaterally without any discussions with anybody in the tribal community, just says we have decided that now we are going to issue this moratorium,” Battin told the Desert-Sun.
Overall the decision was welcomed in Indian country, particularly by non-gaming tribes who have yet to receive money owed to them under the terms of the compact. One of these, the Torres-Martinez tribe, is one of the nine tribes trying to get a state gaming compact.
Torres-Martinez Chairwoman Mary Belardo said that while she was ambivalent about Assembly Bill 66, she feels that the measure’s failure is fair. Belardo, like many tribal leaders in California, said she feels the commission is unfairly holding up payments to the non-gaming tribes as a negotiating tactic to get its own budget.
“This may be sour grapes on my part, but come on, this is just the way life works, I mean if we have to wait for our money why shouldn’t they,” Belardo said.
One senator who is particularly happy with the defeat is minority leader Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga. Members of his staff say they have been working diligently behind the scenes on the bill’s defeat.
They said Brulte feels Gov. Davis has gone beyond the scope of the compact by appointing the commission. Brulte spokesman and tribal liaison David Quintana said the commission is uninformed when it comes to setting policy for tribal gaming. He added he feels the commission is trying to regulate tribal gaming in the same way it regulates card clubs.
Quintana said he thinks that the commission does not fully realize the differences between the two and pointed out that American Indian tribes are sovereign entities and should not be subject to the same rules as private card clubs.
Furthermore, Quintana said the commission is requesting a budget of $3.7 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Though this marks a $1 million reduction from its original request, Quintana said his boss believes the figure to be entirely too much.
“One place that we can really fight the commission is on the budgetary matter, and we will take them on there,” Quintana said.
Brulte himself said he feels this bill was nothing less than an attack on tribal sovereignty and feels supporters are trying to steal at the bureaucratic level what they could not take at the legislative level.
“Republicans are concerned that the Davis administration and the governor’s appointees have no interest in tribal sovereignty. We feel their budgetary requests are, quite frankly, too much,” Brulte said.
The governor’s office reportedly is upset with the Senate for not passing the budget request, blaming a few senators, such as Battin and Brulte, who have large gaming tribes in their districts.
Hillary McLean, a Davis spokeswoman, said he is confident the commission will be funded. She rejected claims Davis and his appointees are subverting tribal sovereignty and said the compacts signed by the tribes states there would be oversight regulating tribal gaming.
“It’s definitely disappointing, but at the end of the day there will be funding for this commission,” McLean said.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Dede Alpert, D-Coronado, received permission for a second vote on the measure. Both the governor’s office and Senate Republican sources hint they may be amenable to a compromise, yet no one was willing to say on which specific points.