The Show

The amendment to end all amendments.

by Isaiah Thompson

So transparent is government in Harrisburg that you can watch it on a webcam. In theory, at least. So, I fired up the old House of Representatives live feed on Dec. 10, hoping to catch the debate on S.B. 711, the bill that would legalize table games at Pennsylvania casinos.

But all I saw was an empty chamber, and all I heard was silence, broken every half-hour by a voice booming, "THE RECESS HAS BEEN EXTENDED 30 MINUTES." The recess lasted all day. Instead of debating the table games bill on the floor, where we can see them, it seems that Democrats — some of them, anyway — met instead behind closed doors. The fruits of their labor became apparent the next day, when the House intranet (yes, they have one, and no, we can't access it) showed a new amendment to the table games bill by Gaming Oversight Committee Chairman Dante Santoni (D-Berks), which Republicans weren't told they'd be voting on until the very last second.

It was, literally, the amendment to end all amendments. More than 130 pages long, it incorporated bits and pieces from other proposals into a super-mega-omnibus amendment. The strategy was obvious: The real debates among the big "D" Democrats had been settled in private, and now they could ram the bill through in one piece, with as little discussion as possible, opposition be damned.

Still, some critical lawmakers managed to wade through the 600 some-odd pages of Santoni amendments — that omnibus amendment was one of four Santoni had offered on the Friday before the Monday vote — and, during a six-hour debate Monday night, they pointed out that Santoni's amendment offers the casinos super-low tax rates and license fees on table games — 14 percent after two years compared to 55 percent for slots. Those are the very numbers, says Rep. Paul Clymer (R-Bucks), recently suggested by gaming industry consultants. Imagine that. It also lets casinos extend credit to slots players.

"You can see the voice and face of the casinos' influence in this legislation!" Clymer declared on the House floor. And, while the table games bill won't provide property tax relief (ostensibly its purpose) for years, it will immediately fund a host of pet projects around the state.

Who had these provisions put into the bill? What webcam were we supposed to be watching to see this thing get written? All we saw was the show — the show of hands. The amendment, and its thousand little favors, passed 97-95.