PALM SPRINGS - A Riverside County tribe's effort to legalize Internet gambling in California continued to face skepticism Wednesday from tribal colleagues gathered for their annual gaming conference.

Several months after a failed push for state legislation authorizing a "tribal intrastate Internet poker consortium," the Morongo Band of Mission Indians near Banning seems no closer to getting significant support from other successful gaming tribes.

Time is short, Morongo Tribal Chairman Robert Martin told people attending the Western Indian Gaming Conference.

Unless tribes expand beyond bricks-and-mortar casinos, California's $7 billion tribal gambling industry risks losing a big part of its business to increasingly popular online gambling sites, Martin warned.

Congress is weighing two bills that would end the federal ban on online gambling in the U.S. That would lead to an explosion of Internet poker sites based inside and outside the country, he said.

"You saw what (the Internet) did to the newspaper industry, the record industry. We don't want that to happen to us," Marin said.

Hundreds of online gambling sites operate outside the U.S., generating $15 billion in revenue, according to a recent estimate. About $3 billion of that is from poker.

The Morongo tribe's proposal last summer called for creating a gambling Web site run by the tribe, card clubs and other consortium members. An intrastate poker site would generate an estimated $350 million in California. The state would receive a share of the proceeds, as would smaller tribes without casinos.

The plan quickly drew objections, though, from some tribes who said it could lead to an explosion of off-reservation gambling.

Those concerns continued Wednesday.

Richard Milanovich, chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in the Coachella Valley, said he isn't sold on the idea.

"The question has come up as to the finer points of what it all means. In this forum, I didn't get the opportunity to ask those questions," Milanovich said.

George Forman, the Morongo tribe's attorney, said Wednesday that parts of the proposal have changed to address some of the concerns raised last summer. He declined to discuss the changes, saying the plan continued to evolve.

Some tribal leaders question the participation of card clubs in the online poker plan. Card clubs have been part of coalitions that opposed tribes in past political fights.

But Martin said Wednesday that the card clubs' involvement will improve the proposal's chances in the Legislature. There are about 80 card clubs in the state, employing thousands of workers, he said.

The Morongo tribe so far has not found an author for legislation containing the online poker proposal, Martin said. A Senate committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the issue next month.