In Dan Morain’s column, “Casino-owning tribes are betting on Brown,” (Forum, Jan. 24), Morain displays a complete misunderstanding of the attorney general’s role with regard to the regulation of tribal casinos in California.
Under the tribal compacts negotiated by Gov. Gray Davis and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in accordance with federal and state law, the tribes are responsible for on-site gaming regulation and control. It is the state’s role to ensure the tribes carry out that responsibility by conducting compliance inspections of tribal casinos and ensuring that tribal regulators correct any deficiencies that turn up. Our special agents conduct investigations regarding any alleged criminal activities at tribal casinos, and we aggressively pursue any threats to the safety and honesty of gaming operations.
In our experience, tribal regulators are sophisticated and effective at ensuring that their casinos are fair and safe. It is telling that Morain does not cite any incidents or problems in the industry to indicate otherwise.
In October 2008, the attorney general’s Bureau of Gambling Control voted against the “minimum internal control standards” because the proposed regulations would have set back the cause of state regulation many years. Given that the proposed minimum internal control standards were subject to serious legal challenge, our “no” vote headed off years of litigation during which the state would have had no enforceable standards. Instead, we urged the parties to sit down and work out their differences, and through hard-fought negotiations, the state achieved a set of regulations that are tough and will, in fact, work.
Finally, Morain wrote that the tribes “largely wrote the new regs.” In fact, I drafted them based on the prior version done by the Gambling Control Commission with the input of the commission, the tribes and my staff.