Pennsylvania gambling bill assures that House will win (not to mention the Senate)

Anyone who has gone to Hawaii has heard the native punch line about white missionaries who came to the islands poor, but amassed great riches for themselves and their descendants. "They came to do good, and they did very, very well," tour guides are fond of saying.
We were reminded of the phrase last week when the Pennsylvania legislature voted to open the state to slot machines -- tens of thousands of slot machines, more slot machines than any state except Nevada. This was done in the name of balancing the budget and reducing property taxes and creating jobs and keeping Pennsylvanians from squandering their money in New Jersey or New York or West Virginia or Canada by giving them someplace to squander it right in their own backyards.
Such altruism. Such concern for good government. Such baloney.
Legislative wild card
Because there, tucked away in the legislation, like a gambler's last dollar hidden in the accordion folds of his wallet, was a little bonus for the legislators.
Each lawmaker will be permitted to own up to 1 percent of any of the 14 planned slot-machine parlors that the bill authorized for the state. Now, 1 percent may not sound like a lot, but the state is estimating that those 61,000 machines are going to generate $3 billion annually. To see how quickly 1 percent can become real money, 1 percent of $1 billion is $10 million.
It is no exaggeration to say that legislators who voted for this bill have provided a loophole that over the years could pay them or their heirs millions. If that doesn't seem right to you, it isn't.
A legislator has no business voting on a piece of legislation that could personally enrich him and his family. And, the potential for mischief -- no, make that corruption -- is enormous.
Already, developers are lining up and jockeying for position to get one of the licenses. Which developer is going to be the first to tell a legislator, no, you can't buy into my company. None. Because the guys who run gambling play the odds, and they known that the odds aren't with people who tell legislators to buzz off.
Proponents of the bill say this provision was designed to protect legislators against inadvertently running afoul of the law by owning a mutual fund that happened to buy into one of Pennsylvania's gambling spots. Please. Anyone who could say that with a straight face out to be at the poker tables.
Visions of $$$s
The provision is quite telling. It exposes those legislators who think that gambling is a quick fix for virtually everything that ails a state's economy for what they are: people who see nothing but dollar signs. Free money. No pain. And, oh, where's mine?
Pennsylvania legislators are already among the best paid in the nation, with salaries of more than $60,000, generous expense accounts, great benefits and pensions that most of the people shoving nickels into their slot machines will only be able to dream of. But that is not enough.
The legislators want their cut, their piece of the action, their juice. And voters are so smitten with the idea that they could save a few hundred dollars on their taxes each year that they apparently don't even care that they're being played for suckers.
Inevitably, Pennsylvania's move toward slot machines will invigorate the call for machines or casino gambling in Ohio. Like a 14-year-old girl pleading with her mother for permission to have her navel pierced, they will cry, "Everybody is doing it." The only answer to that is the same that the mother gives her child: "If everybody jumps off a cliff, are your going to do it too?"
Before Ohio gets in line to take the leap, it should have more facts and figures than Pennsylvania has.
State Rep. Rod Wilt of Greenville, R-17th, an opponent of the legislation, seriously questions how much tax relief will filter down to the state's residents. By his calculation, the slot-backers estimated the take per-machine at levels far above the norm in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. And the average Pennsylvania household would have to lose $275 a year for every $75 saved on property taxes.
Winners and losers
While certainly the migration of gambling dollars from Ohio to neighboring states is a concern, an equal concern should be the effect that introducing gambling would have on existing businesses. Gambling companies (which, by the way, universally use the word gaming, not gambling) describe themselves as family- and community-friendly purveyors of entertainment.
So, shouldn't we have some idea of how many entertainment dollars they would filter from existing enterprises? How many restaurant tables are empty, movie or theater tickets unsold, sporting events bypassed when people start spending their entertainment dollars in gambling parlors?
It is easy to see gambling as a quick fix. It is more difficult to predict how many gamblers will be forced into bankruptcy, how many families will be torn apart, how many nongambling businesses will be destroyed.
But those kinds of questions should be asked and answered before any state leaps off the cliff into the gambling chasm. Because, make no mistake, once the jump is made, there is no turning back.