Rod Grams: “I rise to briefly make a few comments in strong support of the amendment. I do so not because it will assist my State of…”

“I rise to briefly make a few comments in strong support of the amendment. I do so not because it will assist my State of Minnesota, which already has an established gaming compact with Minnesota Indian tribes, but because this is an issue of fundamental fairness for States and localities. I find it difficult to understand how anybody can argue that the Secretary of the Interior should be given the authority to approve a class III gaming compact, absent the consent of the State in which the gaming is to occur. States must, I believe, have the authority to negotiate and object to gaming compacts. If you remove their right to object to a gaming compact, then you remove their right to negotiate a gaming compact as well. Similar to what now happens in trust applications, the tribal authority will have little incentive for negotiating in good faith, knowing that the Secretary of the Interior can come in and improve their compact and bypass the State anyway. Our States and localities are much too often becoming irrelevant in the decisionmaking process of the Department of the Interior when considering tribal-related situations. The amendment we are addressing here today prevents a Secretary of the Interior from ignoring the impact of gaming operations on States and localities and from circumventing their authority and making unilateral decisions.”