My Gambling Problem

Why I can't stop writing about casinos.

by Isaiah Thompson

Illustration by Evan M. Lopez | Photo by Neal Santos A BEAUTIFUL MIND: Our writer knows the truth about gaming. Why can't any politicians see the light?

[ confessions ]

I can't stop writing about casinos.

God knows I try to get away from them. Since my first casino story in Philadelphia, a piece on Foxwoods' proposed move to Chinatown, I've written about all manner of non-casino-related topics: taxi unions, drug corner payphones, radical Christians, Obama's inauguration ... but I keep coming back.

Worse still, I find my own work to be increasingly arcane. I cite obscure statistics; I can't make it through two paragraphs of a Daily News article on gambling without plotting twice as many new blog posts.A recent hourlong segment about casinos on WHYY's Radio Times actually made me dizzy.

Part of the problem is that the more I learn about casinos in Pennsylvania, the more I see them lurking behind every political decision.

Take the mayor's budget. Despite priding himself on refusing to forecast a possible windfall from Foxwoods and SugarHouse, the mayor is counting on $23 million in "host fees" from the casinos starting in 2012, as well as state casino revenue in the form of wage tax relief and economic redevelopment money. State lawmakers recently threatened to take that revenue away as a penalty for the slow progress on casinos. On Tuesday, the mayor met privately with Sugarhouse investors. On Tuesday, those same lawmakers backed down from their threats.

Suddenly, Nutter — who, as a candidate, pledged to fight casinos — now lists the slot parlors, along with the Barnes Foundation and the National Museum of American Jewish History, among the city's "incredible array of cultural and historical venues."

The casinos' power is awe-inspiring. The hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue they generate are like a great river of gravy flowing through the state, greasing every squeaky wheel in its way.

But it's not awe that fuels my obsession with the casinos. It's the source of all that money that keeps my eyelids twitching at night.

Last December, I wrote a cover story exploring the ways that slot machines, casinos and the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board all work in concert to maintain a breathtaking flow of revenue from patrons.

In my reporting, I read studies about who those patrons are, how that money is extracted and what the consequences can be for communities. It was all pretty hard to swallow.

In particular, the findings of University of Illinois economics professor Earl Grinols —findings which I've posted online over, and over, and over — contradict virtually every one of the many justifications for casinos offered by our elected officials.

Casinos, we are told, will bring jobs to the region. Yet Grinols found that in some cases, the spending of casino revenue outside of a community leads to a net loss of jobs.

Casinos, we are told, will be a boon to the local economy. Yet Grinols finds the social costs of gambling to be so great as to outweigh its benefits. Communities that host gambling have higher rates of white-collar crime (embezzlement, usually, tied to gambling losses); they have higher unemployment, bankruptcy, violent crime and domestic violence. He estimates the cost of casinos to be something like $214 per adult annually, or $3 for every dollar that's generated.

More troubling still is his breakdown of where all that revenue comes from. Between 30 percent and 50 percent of all gambling revenues, he says, comes from "problem" and pathological gamblers.

Just take that in for a minute. Gambling addicts aren't just a necessary downside of the industry. They're its bread and butter. And most of those peoplecome from communities near the casinos. Meanwhile, Philadelphia is slated not just to host two casinos, but to become the largest city with slots in the United States.

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To call these statistics troubling seems inadequate. They are damning. One would think that any responsible politician or public official involved in casino-related decisions would want to know these things,or, if he did know them, smash the glass, sound the alarms and raise the drawbridge to the encroaching casino industry.

Not so. The vast majority of Pennsylvania pols, from the blissfully unconcerned Ed Rendell on down, treat the downside of casinos as an obscure footnote to the glorious fairy tale of how Pennsylvania created money from nothing.

What's a reporter to do? The more I press public officials to even acknowledge these problems, the more articles and blog posts I write about how oblivious they are, the more I find myself sounding like an anti-casino activist.

I'm not an activist. I'm a reporter. But the arguments seem to me uneven: On one side is data, on the other, vague half-answers and elusive responses. And so I needle. I call the same people, ask the same questions, get the same vague answers. (Both Rendell's and Nutter's press offices were contacted for this article; neither replied.)

Occasionally, public officials will deny these figures —never offering evidence to the contrary — but that's rare. Politicians have a much easier out, and they use it constantly. Public officials simply brush off the pesky problem of gambling addiction by referring to the state's gambling addiction program, which currently receives a whopping one-tenth of 1 percent of all casino revenues to treat gambling problems.

"It's pitiful. It's pitiful. It's chump change. It's loose change from the bureau," admitted state Rep. Mike O'Brien over the phone a few days ago.

O'Brien, whose district includes Fishtown, has been a critic of the SugarHouse location; he is vocal in his concerns about problem gambling, referring often to his own father, who was a gambling addict. He says he is familiar with the studies.

But even O'Brien says he doesn't oppose casinos — just "bad land use." So I put it to him straight: Is there not a moral imperative to speak out against slots?

"Would I vote to overturn the act? Absolutely," he said resignedly. "But I'm keenly aware of the fact that there is not the sentiment to do that."

Last session, he recounted, Rep. Paul Clymer introduced legislation that would take away the tax abatement currently granted to Foxwoods and SugarHouse.

"Seems like a no-brainer, right?" asked O'Brien. "The engine created to reduce property taxes should not be given a break on property tax, right? Lost 80-113.

"Lyndon B. Johnson probably said it best," he added. "Education is wasted upon a politician, because once you learn to count you don't need to know anything else."

Even politicians who might want to speak out against slots see the effort as pointless.

The same seems to be true for our city government. Despite numerous calls (in the past) from Nutter and City Council for independent economic-impact studies, the city hasn't conducted one.

The only independent study that has been done was by Temple economist Fred Murphy, whose findings indicate that the city would benefit substantially less than casinos' owners claim. Yet those findings were dismissed by Terry Gillen, a point-person for the city on casinos.

When I called Gillen last December, she said there was a contract out for the city to conduct its own study. But when I called her again last week to ask if the impact study was complete, her tone had changed.

"We're not doing one," Gillen said. "There is no economic impact study." The contract, Gillen said, was merely to study the financial particulars of the city's leasing arrangement.

Did Gillen know about the potential costs of casinos — higher rates of white-collar crime, say? She didn't. Why would that happen? she asked, sounding surprised.

"Because they lose all their money and steal to make up for it," I answered.

"Really?" she asked.

Gillen, who has always been polite and responsive to my calls, sounded tired and annoyed. And so, frankly, was I.

Why keep pestering officials with questions to which I know they will give no satisfactory answer? Why bother posting over and over again the same studies, when I know it's not data that drives these decisions, but politics?

But I can't stop. To begin to examine how casinos make money is to go down a rabbit hole from which there is no going back.

I've been to Harrah's Chester. I've seen the rows of blank faces and busy fingers; I've watched a man straddling two machines at once, watching neither as he lost whole 20s in seconds. I've been to a meeting of Gamblers Anonymous, where I saw the struggle of people who can only stop gambling by reminding themselves day and night that to play the slots again is to give up on life. And I've read too much data that says those people are the backbone of this industry to be satisfied with a state hot line.

Following my conversation with Gillen, I wrote yet another blog post. It was absurdly long, as usual. My points were self-referential, obscure, myopic. If I hammered, it was with a tiny hammer on a tiny nail. The post, to date, has one comment:

"This is dumb, slander against a good mayor," it says.

I'd like to quit. I just can't.

(isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net)

This article has been corrected to denote Rep. Clymer's correct title.