Booty Stall

Ever see two dogs go for the same piece of meat?

by Isaiah Thompson

Ho ho ho! Brumpapumpum! I'm just full of holiday cheer. Last week, the Grinch of a bill that would legalize table games in Pennsylvania got held up in the legislature and likely won't be taken up again until January. Deck the halls, I say!

Unglaze your eyes, gentle reader. This isn't about blackjack: It's about democracy! About the goddamn American way, goddamnit!

I'll explain. Casino gambling was legalized to make money for the state, right? You wouldn't know it from this bill. The state seems content making less than $200 million annually from table games — small change compared to almost $2 billion it raked in from slots last year. Following a suggestion by Rendell himself, House Democrats proposed to tax table games at less than one-third the rate we tax slots. They proposed licensing fees that some say they could have tripled. The state's leaving money on the table.

While it doesn't do much for us, the bill is packed with new breaks for the casinos, including an extension for Foxwoods' license and a provision that will let casinos extend credit to slots players. Rendell told CP he didn't expect that provision to survive (but that he'd sign it anyway) — and survive it has. You'd think the casinos wrote the bill. And, according to several lawmakers, they did.

So if the bill benefits the state little, and the casinos much — why would anyone want it? One answer is payola: Legislators got $4.4 million from casinos between 2001 and 2008, according to a recent report. Another is that, besides goodies for the casinos, the bill is jam-packed with carefully disguised slush funds and earmarks for pet projects around the state.

Ever see two dogs go for the same piece of meat? After ramming through all these myriad shady provisions, House Democrats suddenly threw a fit when the Senate changed just a couple of them. Notably: They rerouted Philly's share of the pot and removed a clause that, sources say, favored one particular bidder for a particular casino license: Wyo Gaming, L.P. — represented by a bigshot Harrisburg lobbyist. You got it here first.

The bill was a big fat Christmas present: for the casinos, lobbyists and politicians — but not for us. The only reason it crashed is that its proponents, like drunken pirates, were too busy fighting over their plunder to steer the ship.

And that makes this about more than a bad bill: This is about bad government. Fa la la la la.