Sunday, December 03, 2006

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."