The federal government approved Wednesday four gambling agreements, including one for the Pechanga band near Temecula, that will appear on ballots in California's Feb. 5 primary election.

Whether the approvals make the four referendums moot was a hotly debated point Wednesday, as tribes, opponents of the gambling compacts, government officials and lawyers on all sides scratched their collective head.

Officials with the U.S. Interior Department said this month that the agreements, which would allow four tribes to increase the number of slot machines in their casinos, were approved.

But they waited until Wednesday to publish the notices in the Federal Register, the final step in the approval process.

Department officials did not return calls for comment.

As they did when the approvals were announced two weeks ago, supporters and opponents of the gambling deals disagreed on what the publishing of the notices means.

Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro said in a written statement that the tribe considers its agreement, which was negotiated by the governor and passed by the Legislature earlier this year, approved.

The three other tribes are the Sycuan band in East County, the Agua Caliente band in Palms Springs and the Morongo band near Banning.

"Clearly efforts to break these comprehensive agreements are a waste of time and money for the people of California," Macarro said.

However, a spokesman for the No on the Unfair Gambling Deals campaign said the matter is not over until voters have their say. The campaign includes the owner of the Bay Meadows and Hollywood Park racetracks; UNITE HERE, a service workers union; and the Pala Band of Mission Indians, which owns a casino in North County.

"There are no deals to review and or approve until our constitutionally guaranteed referendum process is completed with a statewide vote," said campaign spokesman Scott Mcdonald.

Some legal analysts say the agreements have taken several unusual turns during the approval process.

Professor I. Nelson Rose, who specializes in gambling law at Whittier Law School, said Interior Department Secretary Carl Artman should not have approved the agreements, also known as compacts, because they were subject to the voter referendums.

"He was reading (a federal Indian gambling law) requiring him to act within a short time frame, without clearing up whether there were problems with them, which there certainly were, once the referenda were approved," Rose said.

The agreements would allow the four tribes to increase the number of slot machines in their casinos from a total of about 8,000 slot machines up to 25,000 machines. That would make the casinos among the largest in the country.

Supporters say the compacts will generate about $9 billion for the state in the next two decades. But opponents say the agreements are "sweetheart deals" that will create huge casinos and not generate as much money for the state as the tribes claim.

Opponents and some tribal attorneys have raised other questions about how the agreements were handled, including Secretary of State Debra Bowen's decision to forward them to the Interior Department before a vote on the referendums.

Bowen said through a spokeswoman that state law requires her to send the agreements to the Interior Department.

Scott Crowell, a prominent attorney whose tribal clients include the Rincon band in North County, called Bowen's reasoning "absurd." The state should have waited until Jan. 1, when the agreements became effective, or until after the election once the referendums were approved for the ballot, he said.

There is also a question of whether the Department of Interior reviewed the compacts at all. Opponents of the compacts cite a San Diego Union-Tribune report saying that the department did not review them before a 45-day deadline expired. Federal rules say the agreements are "deemed approved" if no action is taken on them.

"Still the Interior Department presses on with its unbelievable story of highly controversial deals that sit unseen for six weeks and then miraculously appear in an official's inbox too late for review," Mcdonald said.

As supporters and opponents wage multimillion-dollar campaigns in advance of the Feb. 5 election, the specter of a legal fight looms.

"You can view this as a make-work project for lawyers," Rose said. The Whittier Law School professor added, "If these pass, both sides will have good arguments."

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-3511 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.