Table games 3/7/07

As expected, the West Virginia Legislature has spoken, and as expected, 82 percent of West Virginia will be shut out of deciding whether to take the next step in making this state more dependent on the gambling business.

Why does West Virginia state government want to rely on a source of income as unstable as gambling? To hear the racetrack owners talk, West Virginia racetrack casinos can prosper only as long as neighboring states don’t have the same number of offerings that West Virginia does.
West Virginia beat Pennsylvania to slots, but Pennsylvania is catching up. Now West Virginia could be about to have table games. What will West Virginia do when Pennsylvania catches up there, too?

Will this arms race never end?

Add to that the fact that one of the biggest proponents of table games in West Virginia — MRT Gaming, which owns Mountaineer Racetrack & Gaming Resort in Chester — also owns a slots casino in Pennsylvania, and you get the feeling West Virginia is being used as leverage by a company that wants to have large-scale table games gambling in Pennsylvania.

This whole thing smells bad. Legislators and local officials in the four racetrack counties may covet the money they expect from gambling, but for the state as a whole this bill is a bad deal.

The state’s experience with the previous plan to reduce, restrict and regulate video poker machines resulted in video poker parlors in every community. If a lawsuit against the state’s restrictions on advertising by video poker parlors opens the door to advertising by them, it’s hard telling what some neighborhoods will look like.

In the -- what? -- six years since video poker was approved, the state has became addicted to it. Profits from video poker are used to pay for PROMISE scholarships and to pay off bonds for economic development projects such as Pullman Square in Huntington and Appalachain Power Park in Charleston. That money can’t be cut off now.

I just can't buy the "intellectual property" argument that I've written about before. From here, it sounds like the only way to approve table games is a constitutional amendment voted on by all of West Virginia.

If that's what the people want, fine. If not, fine. It's their decision. But the way the Legislature is doing it is just plain wrong.

So what else is new?