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The Ho-Chunk tribe missed an initial budget deadline Monday to pay an estimated $72 million in gambling money that state officials are counting on to help balance an already stressed state budget.

It's now been more than two years since the tribe, locked in a legal battle with the state over its gambling compact, has made any of the disputed payments on its casino operations.

The lingering dispute raises the question of whether the state will receive nearly $100 million in estimated payments expected by June 2009 in time to prevent a gaping hole in a budget that could force lawmakers to raise taxes, cut services or borrow money to make up the difference.

The missed deadline — Monday was the end of the first fiscal year of the current two-year budget — comes a little over a month after state officials

approved a $527 million

budget fix to cover a shortfall caused by the souring economy.

"We're just anticipating that it will be paid by them," said Linda Barth, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration. "We will

try as outlined in the (gambling) compact to collect the money."

The dispute revolves around money that the state is seeking under a gambling compact Gov. Jim Doyle signed with the tribe in 2003 giving the Ho-Chunk perpetual gambling rights and additional games in exchange for much larger payments to the state. A state Supreme Court decision

invalidated a similar

compact with another tribe in 2004.

A request for comment from Ho-Chunk Nation officials was not returned Monday. Ho-Chunk officials have said that, because of the court decision, the tribe doesn't owe the amount the state is

seeking but is willing to negotiate a new gambling compact.

When they put together the state's 2007-2009 budget last fall, Doyle and lawmakers figured they would receive $72 million from the Ho-Chunk tribe by Monday and the nearly $100 million by the end of the budget in June 2009. It is this later date that matters most because missing it would sink the whole two-year budget into the red. Right now, the state has enough money to pay what it owes without having to borrow or resort to other measures to raise short-term cash, Barth said.

The disputed payments are estimates of what state officials expect the tribe to owe based on a percentage of its casino business. The Ho-Chunk tribe's gambling operations include a casino near Lake Delton and a bingo hall outside Madison.

The state is also still in negotiations with the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa over payments officials believe the state is owed, Barth said.

Among other litigation, the state sued the Ho-Chunk Nation in federal court in Madison in 2005 to try to compel binding arbitration over the payments, which the tribe has opposed. The case is awaiting a decision from federal Judge Barbara Crabb. The tribe has also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, Barth said.

In 2003, Doyle and state Indian tribes negotiated new gambling compacts that brought the state bigger annual payments in exchange for allowing the tribes to offer Las Vegas-style games in perpetuity. But Republican lawmakers sued Doyle over the terms of the deals and the state Supreme Court invalidated some parts of the compacts, including the provisions that they never expire.

After the high court ruling, the Ho-Chunk temporarily stopped offering the new table games and withheld compact payments. The last payment made to the state by the tribe was $30 million sent in May 2006, Barth said.

As of January, the state had paid an outside law firm $1.2 million to collect the payments from the tribe.