SACRAMENTO – Reversing itself, a Senate panel voted yesterday to restore funding for a team of slot-machine inspectors who represent a leading edge of the state's effort to establish an independent presence in California's Indian casinos.
The Assembly is expected to follow suit next week, but the state's gambling commission has not quelled all tribal opposition to the slot-testing operation.
The commission, backed by the Schwarzenegger administration, says random slot inspections are a critical component of a much broader regulatory effort that the state is attempting to develop.
“I'm not saying tribal gaming agencies do not do a good job. They do,” said Steve Giorgi, the commission's executive director. “But you have to have that arm's length where you need the outside regulators to come in.”
Slots have become computerized “cash registers” that record and report much of the cash that flows through California's $8 billion tribal gaming industry, Giorgi said in the past.
Yesterday, the commission's request received a strong endorsement from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.
“Of the commission's budget proposals, we felt this one had the most merit,” said Michael Cohen, an analyst who specializes in gaming. “We do think the commission is starting to build up some expertise in regulating slot machines and we want to continue to see that progress made.”
The Senate budget subcommittee voted unanimously to restore $1 million that it had lopped from the commission's budget nearly two months ago. The money would allow the commission to make the temporary positions of eight slot inspectors permanent.
When the panel deleted the funds, Chairman Mike Machado, D-Linden, was angry that the commission had missed a deadline to deliver a report on results of the first two years of the slot-testing operation.
That report on testing of more than 400 slot machines at seven Indian casinos identified widespread software lapses, primarily the continued use of software deemed obsolete by manufacturers.
Three of the casinos inspected are in San Diego County, on the Pala, Pauma and Viejas reservations.
Tribes insisted the software remained approved for use and did not compromise the integrity of any games.
The California Tribal Business Alliance, which represents the three San Diego County tribes, declined to comment yesterday.
The state's largest tribal organization, the 40-member California Nations Indian Gaming Association, opposes a state slot inspection program.
“Mississippi is the only other state that has tried it and it just became a huge, bloated bureaucracy,” said Anthony Miranda, the association's chairman. “You couldn't get machines through the testing.”
