The file was later returned to Galindo. Bingo investigators, in turn, gave it to the Aurora police, who are considering bringing charges based on the theory that the reason Missionary Flights' president didn't know about its bingo games is because the license was forged. (The games manager for Missionary Flights has voluntarily surrendered the suspect bingo license--and gone to work running bingo games for the Doyles.)
Did Buckley's meeting with her investigator's targets taint the inquiry? In some ways it doesn't matter: The episode further reinforced the appearance that the industry was on autopilot, free to operate without any troublesome meddling by the secretary of state.
That, in turn, has created an anything-goes atmosphere among those who are supposed to be regulated by Buckley. The attitude has shown up in a near-complete disregard for state bingo inspectors.
In November 1996, according to personnel department records, bingo inspector Galindo arrived at a south Denver bingo hall as part of an ongoing investigation. He asked to review the hall's records, as he is permitted to do by law. Not only did the hall refuse to permit the inspector to look at the records, the scene quickly took on a feeling of contemptuous slapstick.
After being refused entry to the hall, Galindo called the police to escort him in. But when they arrived, the hall manager told the officer that Galindo was a fraud. The evidence? The owner stated he had been contacted personally by Governor Romer, who informed him that Galindo was impersonating an officer. Romer, he added, had signed an executive order stating that Galindo was not allowed to enter the bingo hall. Galindo was turned away.
Buckley offered no help. In fact, the following week Galindo was disciplined for improperly reporting the two hours of work he did that night. He appealed; on September 3, an administrative law judge ordered Buckley to pay him for his work that night.
The effect of the secretary of state's de facto deregulation of bingo extends far beyond a handful of neglected investigations. In the past few years the game of bingo has changed dramatically. The introduction of high-tech electronic machines into what was once a paper-and-marker activity has steered bingo further away from the church basement and closer to the slot machines of Central City and Black Hawk.
And most people in the industry agree that Buckley has not kept pace with the changes. In the past year, two new machines have begun showing up in the state's bingo halls. One looks like a slot machine and reads pull-tabs. The other permits a player to keep track of many bingo games with an electronic counter. The use of both has spread rapidly.
Bingo has precise laws explaining how the games must be played in Colorado; the new electronic games fall into unexplored gray areas. Unfortunately, says Lynn Ellins, director of the Colorado Bingo Association, Buckley has yet to make an official legal ruling on either. So how do players know they're not illegal? Why has the game's use spread? "It hasn't been stopped," Ellis points out.
Indeed, like the ballot initiatives, new bingo machines seem to have appeared in Colorado by default. Some, or all, may eventually turn out to be legal. But, says Debbie Lambrecht, an accountant whose primary business is helping nonprofits balance their books, consideration must be given to the fact that, as a rule, the machines end up costing charities more money and making a greater profit for hall owners and suppliers.
"The nonprofits are making less and less money," she says. "And a lot of that is due to the new electronic machines that are being put into the halls." Because most charities don't own their own bingo halls, she adds, the nonprofit organizations are being forced to use the newer, more expensive games against their better judgment.
Across the country, it has not gone unnoticed that in Colorado, bingo has shifted from an activity that operates to benefit charities to one that favors hall owners and suppliers. In the past several months, according to one secretary of state employee intimately familiar with bingo regulation, Vikki Buckley's office has fielded calls from bingo-supply companies in Arizona, New Jersey and Nevada. They wanted to know how they could get into the business in Colorado. They'd heard it had become unregulated.
The Colorado Secretary of State's office once had a reputation for being among the most far-sighted, and competent, in the country. Under Republican Natalie Meyer, it was one of the first to make corporate and campaign records available to the public by computer. But Buckley's failure to deal with new technology isn't limited to bingo; she has yet to make campaign-finance reports available over the Internet, as she promised she would two years ago. That's just another in a long line of complaints about her office's work on elections issues.
Carolyne Kelley started working in the secretary of state's elections division in 1992, charged with overseeing the petition initiative process. Like many others, she worked hard to get Buckley elected two years later. And this past July, like so many others before her, she quit, disenchanted by an office and a boss that seemed to be spinning from one blunder to the next, with no end in sight. "It gets to the point where you're embarrassed to be part of this," she says.
Colorado voters should feel the same way.
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