Gambling Take Here Is Fairly Modest

California’s take from the gambling industry is modest compared with that of other states: $180 million a year from horse tracks, card rooms and tribes.

Although California is the second-largest gambling state, after Nevada, at least seven others receive more, according to surveys by the National Assn. of State Budget Officers and by The Times.

This year’s tribal payments are supposed to total $140 million, though payments are $10 million short, and two tribes have sued over the payment process.

“We are very low,” California Department of Finance Director Steve Peace said of the sums California collects. “There is a question of equity, fairness and proportionality.”

Most states base payments on the number of slot machines, the most lucrative attraction at any casino.

The California Gambling Control Commission estimates that tribes in this state have 51,400 slot machines in their 54 casinos. There were 18,597 machines before voters granted tribes a monopoly to run Nevada-style casinos by approving Proposition 1A in March 2000.

Oregon and some other states collect little or nothing from tribes. But Connecticut collects 25% of the revenue, or $400 million a year, from about 12,400 slot machines at tribal casinos.

In Arizona, 15 tribes operate fewer than 11,000 slot machines but are expected to pay about $85 million in the coming year. New York is expected to receive $36 million in the coming year from the one tribe there with slots; officials say that tribe has 2,625 slots.

In congressional testimony this month, Brenda Soulliere, chairwoman of the California Nations Indian Gaming Assn., a trade group, called the Connecticut deal “extremely generous” and an “unreasonable precedent.”

She said in her written remarks that Congress approved the 1988 law permitting tribal casinos as a way to help impoverished tribes, not states. She urged that states be reined in.

“Today, it seems that revenue sharing has become simply the cost of doing business for Indian nations,” Soulliere testified. “This view is unacceptable to CNIGA’s member tribes.”

-- Dan Morain, Times Staff Writer