Gambling Cure States, Tribes, Individuals Dependent On Gaming

First of two parts

The Powerball sign on Interstate 90 flirts with drivers below, winking a digital promise of wealth. Jackpot, “$5 Million!”

On the same stretch, another billboard antes in. “Coeur d’Alene Tribal Bingo/Casino,” the sign woos. “Your Best Bet!”

In the high-stakes business of gambling, Idaho wants the tribes to fold, even though the state’s own lottery has raked in $117 million in profits since 1989.

Tribes say that’s hypocritical. Their casinos could not have opened if not for the legalization of the lottery.

“If you didn’t have a lottery in Idaho, then there wouldn’t be Native American gambling,” said Tom Grey, head of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. “That opened the door.”

The casino gambling machines aren’t the traditional one-armed bandits. They dispense ticket vouchers, not cash. Just like the lottery.

“You have to wonder if they’re worried about Indian gaming competing with them,” said Coeur d’Alene tribal spokesman Bob Bostwick. “It’s about as un-American as you can get. That’s how we built this country.”

Idaho Lottery Director Dennis Jackson said he considers Indian casinos competitors, but makes no effort to fight them.

Anti-gambling activists like Dennis Mansfield used to lobby against the lottery, but now focus on the tribes.

“Call it what it is, man,” said Mansfield, a founder of Help Idaho Thrive. “It’s Atlantic City west.”

Betting on the future

In another age, they were wealthy. Rich because of land and lake.

But modern poverty mired the Coeur d’Alenes in unemployment.

So like tribes across the country, they decided to stake their destiny on gambling.

Critics warn it’s a short-term fix leading to crime and ruin. But for now, anyway, the tribe says it is pulling out only aces.

“There’s a saying in the West,” said the tribe’s chairman, Ernie Stensgar. “The new buffalo is the gaming.”

He calls anti-casino legislation the new cavalry, waging war against Native Americans. The 1990 census found them the most impoverished minority group in the nation.

The Coeur d’Alene tribe opened its casino in 1993. It made $8 million last year and employs about 200 people. The tribe says it’s created a ripple effect of 2,200 jobs in the region and brought $100 million to the regional economy through employment and tourism.

The tribe says closing the casino would devastate its economy. Before gaming came to Worley, the tribe had an unemployment rate of 55 percent. Now it’s less than 15 percent.

“What’s going to happen to the tribe if gaming is taken away?” Stensgar said. “I don’t see Boeing moving down here. I don’t see the state giving their lottery money to the tribe.”

This year, the tribe’s casino gave more than $200,000 each to the tribal school and the cash-strapped Plummer-Worley School District.

The casino cash may help save an after-school program for young children, an alternative program for at-risk kids and classes that try to keep the native Coeur d’Alene language from withering away.

District supervisor Bob Singleton said the casino has helped schools plug into the Internet. The district has bought 40 computers in the past three years with gaming money.

The tribe has built a $91,000 college scholarship fund. It’s started educational bus trips for students and outings for senior citizens. Leaders also hope to buy back more land inside the reservation to preserve tribal sovereignty.

But is gambling appropriate?

The oft-cited ills of gambling were considered, Stensgar said. “We weighed the evils of gambling with what we could do.”

Members visited the Oneida tribe in Wisconsin to see its gambling operation. They saw a new health clinic. A Head Start facility. Stensgar even came home with a shirt that read, “Oneida Health Club.”

“We looked at gaming from that perspective - ‘How can we help our tribe?’ It wasn’t too hard for us to make that decision.”

The state’s money machine

It’s easy to see why tribes turned to gambling; Idaho’s lottery has posted record sales.

Even tiny Gittel’s Grocery in Coeur d’Alene sells up to 500 tickets a day. “Just imagine what the big stores sell,” said clerk Cindy Garcia.

A plastic case full of scratch tickets sits on the counter. Games have names like “Dough in a Row,” “Beach Bum Bucks,” “Karma Cash.”

“We have people who play every day,” Garcia said, shaking her head. “They spend a lot of money.”

Across the state, they spend millions. In 1996, it was $92 million. They won $55 million of it back.

State budget analyst Gordon Fisher said 60.3 percent of Idaho’s lottery money went out as prizes last year. Administration cost 9.5 percent, advertising 2.8 percent. That left just 21.6 percent in public coffers.

The May 1996 issue of Money magazine rated Idaho’s lottery the least efficient in the nation, spending more of its take on prizes and administrative costs than any other.

That angers gambling opponent Grey. If government pitches a means to raise cash for the public good, he said, that’s where the money should go. “That means it’s not a good tax,” Grey said. “It doesn’t do what it says.”

The clerk at Gittel’s sees a lot of winners. “They win $1, $5 … enough to keep them playing,” Garcia said.

She’s sold tickets to people with deep pockets and to people with nothing. Housewives. Business owners. People on welfare.

Who really plays? Wealthy or needy, lottery players are lured by the hope of the big win that usually doesn’t happen.

“It’s a regressive tax. Poor people tend to gamble more,” Grey said. “States are cannibalizing their own citizens.”

The industry disagrees. An editorial in this month’s Lotto World magazine lambasted those who say lotteries appeal to the needy.

A recent Idaho Lottery-commissioned study found those buying its tickets tended to be women, age 37-45, making $25,000 to $30,000 per year.

But Grey said ZIP code analysis tells his group that nationwide, lottery players are the poor.

“Poorer neighborhoods will buy more lottery tickets,” Grey said. “If you can’t get ahead in America, you buy a lottery ticket … go into your local convenience store and tell me who’s in line. It’s not James Bond with some blonde on his arm waiting to buy his lottery ticket.”

He goes so far as to say “it’s almost consumer fraud.”

Idaho Lottery’s Jackson said TV commercials pitching the possibility of owning satellite dishes or pro sports teams are just fanciful humor.

“We want the lottery games to be fun, entertaining and winnable to the player,” he said. “We do not say, ‘get rich quick,’ or ‘here’s your route out of poverty.”’

Some, though, may hear that message. And if they’re already wired for it - “predisposed,” researchers say - they can become addicts.

A Post Falls woman who worked at a Texaco station was arrested in February for reusing winning lottery ticket stubs turned in by customers; police said she would cash them in at a second store and keep the winnings.

She spent the money on more tickets, police said.

“It was a almost a daily situation - $336 to as little as $4,” said Post Falls Detective Dave Beck. She did that 43 times, Beck said, stealing $2,500.

“When I brought her in for an interview, she immediately broke down. She knew she had been caught and said she had a problem.

“She said, ‘I’m addicted to scratch tickets.”’

Lottery and little league

Idaho’s lottery does good things. The take is split between public schools and the state permanent building fund.

The money has removed asbestos from a high school in Moscow. More than $200,000 went toward upgrading schools in Lewiston. It bought a sprinkler system, repaired roofs, and bought new desks in Lapwai. More than $60,000 went to replace the roof of Kellogg Middle School.

But studies suggest that long-term, lottery money may come at a steep cost. Even though lottery tickets are for sale only to adults, young people are becoming hooked.

“Underage youth have penetrated every form of social, legalized and illegal gambling available in their communities,” said Durand Jacobs, a clinical psychologist at Loma Linda University Medical School. Jacobs co-founded the world’s first treatment program for gambling addicts in 1972.

“The kids tells us,” Jacobs said. “And the same story is repeated from state to state, without doubt.”

The kids did invade casinos, Jacobs found. But their favorite bet wasn’t Indian gaming. It was lotteries.

As lotteries proliferate, gambling becomes less taboo. Today, 36 states and the District of Columbia have them.

In a recent study, Jacobs said he found 65 percent of teens had gambled in the past year. One in seven teens reported serious problems.

Compared with adults, Jacobs said, two to four times the number of teens are vulnerable to developing gambling addictions.

Jacobs said what determines how many kids gamble in a given state depends largely on how long the games have been available there.

“Particularly lottery gambling,” Jacobs said. “Kids in those states tended to gamble more.”

And that itch to scratch is as American as baseball caps and burger joints.

“Gaming goes back to the very founding of our nation,” said Frank Fahrenkopf, president and CEO of the American Gaming Association and former Republican Party chairman. “George Washington’s Army was fed, armed and clothed with money from lotteries.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color); Graphic: Idaho’s lottery sales soar

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: COMING MONDAY Gambling can be addictive, and as state lotteries and Indian casinos have blossomed in the region, so have the opportunities for abuse.