Inquirer Editorial: Stop playing games

By continuing to bar state Treasurer Robert McCord from its closed-door sessions, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board is litigating with revenues better used for tax relief - while at the same time snubbing citizens' right to greater oversight of casino gambling in the state.

The gaming board does its reputation for openness no good, either, by adopting restrictive policies on attendance at executive sessions by McCord, who is a nonvoting ex-officio board member under the state's casino gambling law. That only encourages speculation that gambling regulators might have something to hide.

The seven-member board contends that its independence could be questioned if McCord - as an elected official - sits in on private sessions over casino licensing and other "quasi-judicial deliberations."

But those concerns didn't appear to carry weight with a state appeals panel, which ruled in December that "the treasurer is a commonwealth official acting on behalf of the commonwealth, not on behalf of gaming companies."

In their 6-0 decision permitting a lawsuit by McCord to proceed, the Commonwealth Court judges said they did "not see how the involvement of the treasurer pursuant to statute creates any appearance of impropriety."

That certainly qualifies as the sort of clarity that gambling board chairman Greg Fajt said he would welcome over the summer. Back then, Fajt called for "a review and ruling by the court that would better define" state lawmakers' intent in giving the treasurer a seat on the gaming board.

Yet on Thursday, McCord announced that he'd gone back to the court because the gaming board has continued to bar him or his designee from executive sessions. McCord also said the board was "attempting to impose several new preconditions to limit or otherwise prohibit" his access to deliberations.

In response, Fajt confirmed the board still was insisting McCord sign a nondisclosure pledge and an ethics code. Saying the board wanted to reach a settlement, Fajt contended that the treasurer wasn't acting "with equal good faith."

While the gaming board focuses on the legal fine print, though, an avowed casino watchdog remains in a choke collar.