Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

Good news! The proceeds from new table games at the state's racetracks will go to help the elderly and infirm stay at home instead of being trundled off to nursing homes. What a relief. I thought the cash was headed for gambling operators and political pork projects. Gov. Joe Manchin suggested this week at a press conference that if a measure is approved that would clear the way for table games at the state's racetrack casinos, he'd like to see some of the cash go to keep the old folks at home. That tells us a couple of things: 1) the measure will be approved and 2) the new games will mean extra money, not just a replacement for the cash that will be lost now that the state of Pennsylvania will be fleecing its own flock at the video slots, at least at first. Gambling expansion generally comes tied to something happy sounding -- schools, education, seniors, veterans, wayward panda bears ... whatever. You could just as easily say that gambling money funds the restoration of the Governor's Mansion or the salaries of every hack politician's brother-in-law hanging onto the state payroll. But by putting the slot shekels in a special account, we can kid ourselves into thinking that our budget wouldn't be busted if it weren't for gambling, but that is only a contrivance. You can tell yourself that your pay for Tuesday goes to your mortgage while your pay for Friday goes to your grocery bill, but if you got cut back to three days a week, Kroger and the bank both would know it. Since labor Democrats rolled up some key victories on Election Day, I'm not betting on any spending cuts in the session to come. Our continually swelling budget will get more swollen still as our governor and legislators keep thinking of new initiatives. That means we'll need lots of cash on hand. And as we learned in 2001 when Bob Wise used what little political capital he brought into office on making state government the top dog in the neighborhood gambling business, you've got to offer something, like free college tuition, for instance, to get things rolling. It's particularly piquant for Gov. Manchin to use in-home health care for seniors as his enticement for passing table games. Keeping people out of nursing homes was one of the marquee issues for anti-gambling Sen. Russ Weeks, R-Raleigh. Manchin worked hard on behalf of Mike Green, the greyhound breeder who beat Weeks. Now, Weeks' favorite cause -- and an issue on which he sharply criticized Manchin -- will be used to sell a gambling expansion he fought so hard against. That's what I call sending a message. One of the problems that the gambling interests have had in Charleston, aside from perennially overstating their odds for success, has been that we've done every gambling expansion in the most screwy, backdoor fashion imaginable. Lawmakers have never come clean on gambling. I remember when I would tag along with my Catholic buddies to parish street fairs to get in on the best blackjack games, which were always run by the priests. I assumed until I moved south of the Kanawha that it was like that everywhere. It is not. The rest of you good people seem to be opposed to a friendly game, even if done with the benefit of clergy.

But even so, according to our polls, there seems to be little complaint around the state, even in the most ecclesiastical corners, about having table games at the tracks. If people like me and my Wheeling brethren like to roll dice or play blackjack and vote to allow it, the rest of West Virginia seems content to leave us to our own wicked business.

The legislative math is easy to do, and it seems pretty likely that table games will really be attained this year, especially with the governor giving the initiative a little do-good gloss.

What people don't approve of are Gov. Wise's little neighborhood scholarship generators, which look suspiciously like slot machines.

They're a blight on the state, and the money mostly comes from people who can ill afford to lose it. Then we get to pay the bill when their lives flounder on the rocks of state-sponsored convenience gambling.

For a brief moment before the election, it seemed like a compromise was working itself out. Bring in the high rollers at the tracks with table games and let the licenses for those dingy little slot parlors gradually expire. The revenue would more than replace what was lost, and we'd be free of the moral shame of having the state living off of the addictions of pensioners.

The best part is that we finally could come out in the open on gambling -- destination gambling at luxury racetrack casinos, lottery tickets and nothing more. It would let us finally stop lying to ourselves.

But the people who are making money off those machines and those pensioners have decided that they weren't going to let a good thing go.

They've formed their own lobbying group, led by some politically powerful players from around the state, people like the mayor of Wheeling's brother, Anthony "Herk" Sparchane, who runs a lot of the slots in his brother's jurisdiction.

The argument they're no doubt making to the governor is along these lines: "Why replace revenue if you can just triple it. If you're helping the people with $50 million, think of how much more helpful you'd be with $150 million."