Bible rips panel over Indian gaming

Friday, July 31, 1998 | 10:51 a.m.

TEMPE, ARIZ. -- Nevada's top casino regulator on Thursday chastised the National Indian Gaming Commission for its shoddy enforcement of the fast-growing tribal gambling industry.

Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible took an Indian Gaming Commission official to task during a hearing of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission.

The official, Deputy General Counsel Penny Coleman, acknowledged under questioning from Bible, a member of the Gambling Impact Study Commission, that her federal agency doesn't even require the nation's tribes to maintain minimum internal control standards.

Bible, who has overseen Nevada's casino industry since 1989, charged that such standards are "fundamental" to good gaming regulation.

Coleman, however, insisted that the Indian Gaming Commission is doing a "yeomen's job" considering its limited resources.

But Commissioner Paul Moore of Mississippi backed up Bible, saying: "I don't know how they know (the tribes) are being regulated. "Nobody knows what's coming in and what's coming out (of the casinos.)"

The Indian Commission, created 10 years ago by Congress, has 40 employees operating on a $5 million annual budget that must keep track of 285 Indian casinos in 28 states, Coleman said.

By contrast, Bible said, Nevada's Gaming Control Board has 450 employees and a $25 million budget to monitor about 200 casinos.