HARRISBURG Proposal to add off-track slots

One Senate bill has died in the House, and one House bill is stalled in the Senate.
AP NEWS ANALYSIS
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Forget what you know, or think you know, about slot machines' coming to Pennsylvania.
A discussion that was dominated originally by putting the machines at horse-racing tracks has stretched to involve plunking slots down at off-track sites or using the revenue to subsidize everything from US Airway's leases at Pittsburgh International Airport to convention centers and an ice arena.
"It's called greed, pure and simple," said Sen. Robert J. Thompson, one of six Republican senators who defied the Senate's GOP leadership and voted for a now-stalled slots bill in June. "I think we're slowly or rapidly strangling the goose that could lay the golden egg."
For years, gambling forces have tried to get slots legalized in Pennsylvania.
The push renewed when Gov. Ed Rendell spoke about it during his campaign last year, then gained momentum once he took office in Harrisburg. With slots on the horizon, the state's horse-racing commissions were flooded with applications for a racetrack license from investors who wanted to get rich on slot machines.
But if the path to legalizing slots has been a roller coaster in the past, the ride doesn't seem to be ending this year.
Already one Senate bill has died in the House, and one House bill is stalled indefinitely in the Senate.
Taxable revenue
Now, state Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, D-Philadelphia, has a new idea for a slots bill that is already being dismissed by Rendell and Thompson.
The whole idea here has been to tax the slots revenue to help pay for public education and lower property taxes statewide. In addition, by putting slots at tracks, the state's struggling horse industry would be pulled up by its bootstraps. Purses would balloon, drawing better racehorses and, hence, bigger bets.
The Senate bill advocated legalizing slot machines at eight racetracks to eventually generate about $800 million from slots. That money was to be combined with revenue from a higher income tax to lower property taxes by $1.5 billion statewide.
But the GOP balked at the 34 percent income tax increase that Rendell proposed, so the governor compromised.
The House bill that then passed in July was geared to lower property taxes by $1 billion, plus extra money for special projects, such as to help pay for an expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia and a new hockey arena in Pittsburgh.
The method this time was to put slots at nine tracks and two off-track facilities, one each in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
So Fumo, who crafted the first Senate bill, has another turn.
Slots proposal
The Democrat wants to allow slots at the six racetracks that are already licensed and to award another half-dozen or so slots licenses to parties that own, or can build, an off-track facility in a prime location to tap gambling revenue.
"Our big concern is wherever we put slots parlors, they've got to be financially viable for a number of years," said Fumo's counsel, Christopher Craig.
Fumo has a proposal he hopes to introduce in the coming weeks, his staff said. While Democrats have solidly supported the previous slots bills, they've needed the support of a few Republicans to pass them.
This idea is the most likely vehicle to ensure that the state raises $1 billion, Craig said.
That's because a gambling commission would award six slots licenses for the specific purpose of raising gambling dollars, he said. The alternative has been anchoring slots parlors to racetracks that are licensed by a horse-racing commission -- racetracks that could be built in places where they lose out on potential slots revenue, or compete with other slots parlors for a piece of the pie, Craig said.
And the plan could protect the six racetracks that are already licensed by not creating even more tracks.
The idea may not be the last that Pennsylvanians hear about; however, it is being met with skepticism that it expands gambling too far for most lawmakers to support.
On the other extreme, pumping it up to provide more slots money for pet projects, like convention center funding, "may be necessary to get a political consensus," Craig said. "But people have to realize that this is not a money tree."