BOISE - The Coeur d'Alene Tribe is fighting Idaho's horse racing industry by asking the state to ban lucrative betting machines known as instant horse racing terminals.

Legislation backed by the tribe would repeal a 2013 law that authorized instant horse racing - betting on a previous race without any identifiable information. Three of Idaho's eight racetracks have installed the devices.

The Senate State Affairs Committee voted unanimously to introduce the legislation Friday, one day after a House committee spent nearly two hours discussing the legality of the machines and expressing dismay that they may have been deceived into approving a cleverly disguised slot machine.

Rep. Vito Barbieri, R-Dalton Gardens, grilled Racing Commission Executive Director Frank Lamb during the House hearing on Thursday to determine whether the machines are a game of skill, or a game of chance.

"I have a couple of questions that I had a couple of years ago," Barbieri said. "We talked about odds and how they are calculated, and that led me to ask how these odds are displayed on the machines."

In 2013 when the legislature passed law allowing historic racing, Barbieri said Lamb had told him that information would be displayed on the screen.

"From what I have seen I don't see any odds displayed on the screen," he said.

Lamb said at that time, that was what he understood the machines would have displayed, but he said it had changed to what the machine will pay if the horse wins.

"It's there but it's just in a different form from what you would see on a tote board," Lamb said.

Barbieri concluded that it appeared that gamblers would see the same information that they would see on an electronic slot machine.

"They will see what they get paid just like a slot machine," he said. "And they are not able to calculate or make a determination on which horse they should wager on."

Rep. Don Cheatham, R-Post Falls, said many of the representatives who passed the legislation authorizing the historic racing machines felt what has been installed is not what they were told would be installed.

"They are saying there is nothing about horse racing indicated on the machines," he said, and there was a lot of discussion of whether they violate the constitution.

Cheatham said he wasn't surprised to learn that the Tribe's legislation got introduced in the Senate.

"I think that is the best way to go," he said.

The House committee decided to table the issue until later next week.

The machines have a 2-inch screen that shows the last few seconds of a horse race while the rest of the machine spins with different slot-machine style symbols and sounds.

The Idaho Racing Commission said the machines are legal because bettors place wages against other bettors, known as pari-mutuel betting, and not the house.

What's more, officials argue that the machines encourage live racing events because part of the profit is dedicated to the "purses" shared by the horse owners.

But "testimony will show how they operate; they look very, very much like slot machines," said Bill Roden, representing the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, who introduced the legislation.

Roden, a former state lawmaker, said he remembers when slot machines were first banned in Idaho during the 1950s, but he still voted in favor of legalizing pari-mutuel betting when it was first introduced nearly 30 years ago because he saw they were two different forms of gambling.

He said the Tribe didn't automatically oppose instant racing in 2013 because it trusted the promises that the terminals were not slot machines.

Lawmakers expressed particular alarm that one of the three locations offering instant racing machines had been approved to operate away from the racetrack.

According to Idaho law, all instant racing must take place on a state-licensed racetrack, with the exception that the racetrack may allow simulcast and pari-mutuel betting off-site to attract more customers.

Lawmakers agreed to tweak the law because most Idaho racetracks are tied to county fairgrounds, located away from populated cities.

"It is concerning to me that any track can assign this right to any location they want, which in my opinion was not the intent of the law," said Senate President Pro-Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, who was part of the unanimous vote. "There's been a lot of talk around the Capitol. People are concerned."

Along with the legislation, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and three other tribes have sent a letter to Gov. Butch Otter and Attorney General Lawrence Wasden demanding that the state stop all use of the machines.

Lamb defended the machines Thursday and Friday, stressing that the commission is receptive to the Legislature's concerns over the proliferation of the machines.

"I certainly felt the sting of the arrows," he said Thursday. "Because it is pari-mutuel wagering, we can regulate it. If it were not, we couldn't."