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PhillyDeals: Treasurer sues to join casino board meetings

What does an elected official have to do to get into the secret meetings held by Pennsylvania's gambling regulators? State Treasurer Rob McCord sued the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board Tuesday, asking Commonwealth Court to confirm his right to "fully participate in all public and executive sessions."

What does an elected official have to do to get into the secret meetings held by Pennsylvania's gambling regulators?

State Treasurer Rob McCord sued the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board Tuesday, asking Commonwealth Court to confirm his right to "fully participate in all public and executive sessions."

The treasurer is a non-voting member of the board, under state gambling law. But McCord says the board, headed by Chairman Gregory Fajt, "has attempted to segregate and exclude the Treasurer" by keeping him and his staff out of high-level sessions and "refusing to share confidential information."

That follows a memo last month from the board complaining that John Lisko, McCord's representative, had asked "troubling" and "at best, ill-advised" questions of casino magnate Steve Wynn in a March public hearing over Wynn's proposal, since retracted, to build a casino in South Philadelphia.

The memo, which McCord said was hand-delivered to his office by gaming board member James Ginty, says Lisko, in pressing Wynn, may have "deliberately intended to undermine the board's defense" against an ongoing lawsuit by developer Donald Trump and his partners over the way the board gave out casino licenses in 2006.

But Lisko told me he was asking basic questions about Wynn's financing, as other board members have asked in other meetings.

In a letter to Fajt, McCord called the board's memo "poorly researched and amateurish" and a "blatant misreading" of casino law. Responding to other claims in the memo, McCord said his job makes him less "political" and more accountable to the public than appointed board members such as Fajt, who owe their posts to the governor or General Assembly bosses.

McCord could end the stalemate by signing a confidentiality agreement, the gaming board said in a statement through spokesman Douglas Harbach.

"Our expectation was that he would be at our last executive session meeting on April 28, and the forms had been prepared for his signature, but he did not attend," Harbach added. "While we are mystified by the tack he is taking, we are confident in our interpretation of the Gaming Act."

Why not sign? "Rob is a statewide elected official. Just saying he can show up at this meeting and sign an agreement, without staff looking at it, without our lawyers looking at it, without making sure it's appropriate, doesn't work," Lisko told me.

Who owns D.C.?

The six largest U.S. banks - Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley - and their lobbyists and trade groups have hired more than 200 former Democratic and Republican congressional staffers and spent more than $200 million last year, largely to block bank reform measures in Congress, according to a new report titled "Big Bank Takeover" by the labor-backed Campaign for America's Future.

Kevin Connor, the author of the report and co-director of the Public Accountability Initiative, called the result "a historic assault on the political system" by banks "even as they have scored $160 billion" in U.S. loans and aid.

Should we pay senior aides more, so they don't go over to the dark side? "They don't deserve more" than their low-six-figure salaries, said Bob Borosarge of the Campaign for America's Future, which paid for the report.

Nor is he pushing specific proposals to end the "revolving door" between government and banks. Rather, the groups are pushing to prevent last-minute "backroom deals" to water down consumer protection and other limits on banks, Borosarge said, as financial reform legislation speeds through Congress.

The report lists 49 "lobbyists for Citigroup" who had formerly served in Congress, including ex-Sens. John Breaux (D., La.) and Trent Lott (R., Miss.), or worked for Congress and government agencies.

But the number of "internal and external" lobbyists employed by Citi "has consistently trended downward" since early last year, and now totals just 37, according to Citigroup spokeswoman Molly Millerwise Meiners, who previously worked for the Treasury Department.