DN Editorial: GOVERNING'S NOT A GAME
WITH THE STATE budget now nearly four months overdue, we suppose it was inevitable that lawmakers would start exhibiting symptoms of a strain of disease brought on by laziness, lack of political will and lack of imagination. That disease is called "gambling."
WITH THE STATE budget now nearly four months overdue, we suppose it was inevitable that lawmakers would start exhibiting symptoms of a strain of disease brought on by laziness, lack of political will and lack of imagination. That disease is called "gambling."
This week, some Republican lawmakers in Harrisburg said they are considering a budget fix by expanding gaming to include Internet gaming and slot machines at offtrack betting parlors and airports.
No one has proposed slots machines in schools and churches. Yet.
The problem with this idea is that it isn't an idea, it's a default. And in this state, it's a particularly flawed one.
Gaming was legalized by the Legislature in 2004, with the first slots parlor opening in 2006; now there are 12. The state expanded into table games in 2010. Year-to-date revenues from slots alone before the state takes its hefty cut: $17.6 billion. The state's general fund gets 34 percent; the rest goes to property-tax reduction, tourism and the horse-race industry.
Imagine if someone said today, "We can raise $6 billion a year for the state's general fund and more for other uses." What a solvent, healthy state that would be, able to afford to fix infrastructure, fund schools and create aggressive job-development strategies. And yet in less than 10 years (starting in 2007, when casinos were opening in full swing), that's exactly how much money the state has gotten from slots parlors. We all know how that worked out: We are not solvent and healthy. In fact, we're desperate. Again.
And then there's the horse-race industry. To date, the horse-race development fund - which funds racehorse owners and the purses that go to people who bet on horses - has gotten nearly $2 billion from casino money.
Two. Billion. Dollars.
The money people lose in slots parlors goes to the people who win betting on horses. In other words, we created a separate gambling industry in the state in order to fund another faltering gambling industry.
Oddly enough, there's another fund devoted to racing, called the State Racing Fund. This is a fund fueled by a tax on wagers, and is supposed to help people breed and maintain horses. But when Auditor General Eugene DePasquale audited the fund in June, he said the industry was so troubled that it faced a catastrophic shutdown.
One problem DePasquale found was that race fund was being raided for other things. But we're more concerned about the other problem: Wagers have declined. Fewer wagers mean fewer are betting.
Clearly, an infusion of billions of dollars hasn't helped the horse-race business in the state. Isn't it time to do something about this? And we don't mean throwing more money at it. If big purses aren't helping, why don't we use some of that money to invest in other things, like education?
State Rep. Todd Stephens, R-Montgomery County, proposed just that earlier this year. It went nowhere, but his instinct was right: A budget crisis is a signal that we should look at things differently. For starters, the state's gambling habit - and the allocation of the money that comes from that - is overdue for re-examination.
