Casino: To smoke or not to smoke?

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — The Navajo Nation Council will hold a work session today to discuss a proposed tobacco ordinance and its impact on the new gaming facilities to be built in the Navajo Nation.

The session was requested by Council Delegate Thomas Walker Jr., who represents Birdsprings, Leupp and Tolani Lake chapters.

Officials from the New Mexico Cancer Center, the American Cancer Society, Navajo Division of Health and the Southwest Navajo Tobacco and Education Prevention Project will be available for questioning during the session.

Also to be discussed is a bill sponsored by Thoreau Delegate Edmund Yazzie regarding an act related to the Unauthorized Recording Act of 2007.

Ray Etcitty, general counsel for the Navajo Gaming Enterprise, said Thursday that according to financial statistics, a smoking ban at a casino would result in a 20 percent reduction in revenue.

“All our competitors are ‘smoking,’ so therefore we would be the only ones that aren’t. From a competitive point of view, people don’t go.

“A 20-percent drop in revenue equates to a 40-percent drop in employment. A casino has fixed costs. You have certain debt, you have electricity, maintenance, upkeep. All of that sort of stuff still needs to paid, regardless. Therefore, the only variable that can be adjusted to account for the 20-percent loss of revenue is employment.

“It’s sort of funny that the Navajo Nation on one hand approves this casino, and then subsequently, even considers a legislation that will affect what they wanted to do in the first place.”

Etcitty said the Navajo casino it not going to be 100-percent smoking, but will have designated smoking areas.

“We have built in our systems to account for how it will be ventilated. Also, when we borrowed money, we had plans for a 100 percent air exchange. What that means is 100 percent of the air is going to be circulated out.

“Most places have air at one side of a wall, and they have an exhaust on the other side of the wall, but then what happens is your air gets mixed.”

The Navajo casino will have the air pushed out from the floor and captured at the ceiling, Etcitty said, “so therefore, there’s no way that air hovers or mingles with other air. All air goes in, all air goes out. So even if a person smokes, it just quickly rises, is sucked out, and then you have air from the floor that keeps a constant flow and moves it out.”
According to the Gaming Enterprise’s $35 million loan with the Navajo Nation, the Enterprise has to give notice to the Nation whenever a major incident occurs that will impact the gaming.

“If they veer into this path, we’re going to have to notify Navajo, saying, ‘Navajo, because you approved this, it impacts our ability to pay you back. We’re providing you advance notice that this may have a large impact on the loans you lent to us because it changes the debt service.’

“This also affects our ability to finance any other casino, because all of the revenues have been projected. Any of the banks we have been talking with, all of the numbers have been put together based on current projections,” he said.