Nathan Small, chairman Fort Hall Business Council of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, told the Senate State Affairs Committee this morning that he supports the bill to repeal instant racing. “When Idaho was considering tribal gaming, there were years of discussion, years … and lots of public input,” he said. “When this decision was ultimately made to have limited operations and confine it to the reservations in Idaho, it was done with the knowledge that every interest group had adequate and multiple opportunities to be heard. In the case of instant racing, it doesn’t appear that that was done.”

He said, “We are heavily regulated. We are required also to do background checks for our employees in our gaming operation,” and prohibited by their compact with the state from using a vendor to operate their gaming. “It does not appear to me that there is anywhere close to this type of regulations on these instant racing casinos,” he said.

Small noted that the chief regulator of instant racing in Idaho, former state Racing Commission Executive Director Frank Lamb, abruptly resigned this month after news surfaced that he’d been a paid lobbyist for a company operating instant racing machines in Wyoming while regulating them here in Idaho. “When you do a background check, you find out these kinds of things,” he said.

Acting Sen. Kimberly Johnson of Caldwell, who is filling in for Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, while she’s ill, quizzed Small about whether money from tribal gaming goes to the state as well as to the tribe. He recounted the division of gaming proceeds under the state-tribal compact. Johnson also earlier asked similar questions of Helo Hancock of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, who said millions have gone to schools in Idaho from his tribe’s gaming proceeds. At the start of the meeting, Johnson disclosed a conflict of interest under Senate rules, saying she’s involved in the horse industry.