Colorado doesn’t have enough auditors to police its gambling industry, and the head of the state’s gaming commission has signaled unhappiness with the agency that controls hiring.
In a terse, four-paragraph announcement Wednesday, commission chairwoman Natalie Meyer called a special emergency meeting of the commission “to discuss abuses in the administration of the Colorado Gaming Act by the Department of Revenue.”
The commission will report on the meeting to the governor and legislative leaders.
Several state legislators said they were surprised by the announcement.
“It sounds like they need to tell us something,” said Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver. “It is entirely out of the blue. From the hurry, you suspect it might be bad news.”
Neither Meyer nor the other four commissioners returned calls.
M. Michael Cooke, executive director of the Revenue Department, said she was taken aback by the tone of the announcement.
“I wasn’t contacted by a member of the commission prior to this being issued,” she said. “There is nothing I can think of that rises to the level of abuses.”
Among matters the commission will discuss is the need for more auditors, said Mark L. Wilson, director of the Colorado Gaming Division, which regulates casinos.
The Division’s Audit Section conducts regular compliance and revenue audits of casinos to ensure they are properly reporting and paying gaming taxes. More than 50 fines totaling $1.9 million have been levied against the casinos in less than 13 years. Nearly half the fines are for poor accounting procedures.
Four of the state’s 13 auditing slots are vacant, one of them for the past year and the others for several months or more, Cooke said. Candidates for all four of the positions are available, and the interviewing process is underway, she added.
The Revenue Department handles most of the hiring process for the auditors. It can refuse to offer job applicants as much salary as the commission proposes paying them. Cooke said she turned down one salary request from the commission that was 30 percent above guidelines set for the auditing jobs.
Cooke said she will attend today’s meeting but believes that commissioners have more on their minds than job vacancies.
“These issues for which we are seeking solutions are very manageable and shouldn’t rise to the level of a special meeting,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
