Arizona Department of Gaming

The report recommends that state officials, including the Governor and Legislature, determine whether the Department’s current regulatory stance is the optimal approach for monitoring Indian gaming operations in Arizona. Though the Department employs extensive oversight activities that are well designed for ensuring the integrity of gaming operations, its approach is among the most extensive and costly in the nation. Further, since the tribal-state gaming compacts negotiated between the State and tribes do not clearly delineate the extent of state oversight or provide the State with any sanction authority to enforce compliance, disagreement exists in Arizona between the Department and several tribes regarding what level of involvement the State should have within Indian gaming. In light of such disagreement, the report recommends that state policymakers decide if the current approach best meets the State’s needs or if a different, less extensive approach is warranted. Regardless of the approach chosen, the report strongly recommends that the Department continue working to improve relations with tribal officials to ensure more effective gaming regulation.

The report also contains findings about the gaming device assessment fees tribes paid for state oversight activities and about the Department’s certification process for vendors providing services to gaming operations. Specifically, the report recommends that the Department, as the State’s representative, work with tribes to renegotiate the gaming device assessments tribes paid to fund the Department’s oversight activities. The report also notes that the Department has made several improvements to its process used to investigate and certify vendors providing services to tribal gaming operations and recommends that the Department consider implementing several additional changes to further streamline the process.