Pete Domenici: “I want to share with him and the Senate a situation that perhaps deserves some special consideration for New Mexico...…”

“I want to share with him and the Senate a situation that perhaps deserves some special consideration for New Mexico... The Federal courts have ruled under the Seminole case that the States are immune from suit and that means they can't be sued by an Indian tribe. So we start with that premise. In the State of New Mexico, we have 14 Pueblos and two Apache tribes that have gaming houses and have compacts. But the compacts are very different than anyone else's in the country... the Supreme Court of the State of New Mexico ruled that the legislature had to be involved in getting this done, not just the Governor. The State of New Mexico, through its legislature... imposed as part of the authority for the Governor to enter into a compact, that each casino owned by the various Indian groups be charged 16 percent on gross slot machine revenues.”