Big Charitable Bingo Halls Beg For Help Legislators Asked To Try To Stem Declining Revenues With New Games, New Rules

Faced with shrinking crowds, tough competition and dwindling revenue, the state’s largest charitable bingo halls pleaded for help from a group of state legislators in Spokane on Thursday.

“Without intervention from the Legislature in the next session, it is unlikely our charitable programs will survive much past two or three years,” said Nick Peck, director of the Silver Buckle Rodeo Club in Vancouver.

Charitable bingo halls around the state netted roughly $47 million last year to fund everything from meals for needy children to women’s shelters to athletic uniforms, skating lessons and mentors for kids.

Statewide, bingo halls have seen their revenues decline steadily since 1994. In Spokane, the slide started in 1992.

While members of the Legislative Round Table on Gambling Policy lauded the social service programs funded by bingo halls, they soundly dismissed some ideas proffered to help the industry.

Don Kaufman, director of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Spokane County, suggested the state allow charitable bingo halls to operate video pulltab machines similar to those approved for Washington Indian tribes last fall.

To gamblers, the device would seem similar to an electronic slot machine. However, it would differ in certain legal and technical aspects.

“All you gotta do is change the pulltab laws,” Kaufman told the panel, which consists of the House and Senate commerce committees.

But the chairwoman of the legislative round table made it clear she wouldn’t support such a change.

“I thought it would be better for us to deal with reality and offer some positive solutions,” said Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Seattle.

Kaufman retorted that “reality” was the nearly 50 percent drop Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Spokane County has seen in its net bingo revenues over the past seven years.

Charitable bingo halls have attributed their decline to competition from Indian casinos, nontribal mini-casinos, an aging clientele and regulatory controls that prohibit them from offering newer, more appealing games.

Members of the industry warned that if they go under, the state will have to provide many of the services they currently cover.

“In Las Vegas, the wealthy get wealthier. With charitable bingo halls, the community benefits,” said Roger Franke, with Arrow International, a firm selling bingo products in Washington.

Representatives for nine of the largest bingo halls in the state offered legislators a variety of suggestions, ranging from allowing them to share facilities, to a moratorium on new bingo licenses, to letting bingo halls use some of their tightly regulated income for advertising.

The legislators who attended the meeting were of different minds as to what to do for the charities. Prentice has made it clear on numerous occasions she’d like the state not to touch gambling for a few years and let market forces have their way.

Rep. Jim Clements, R-Selah, suggested there may be a way to craft some sort of market niche for charitable bingo halls, either through a gambling device that no one else has or by getting various sectors of the gambling industry to work together.

“While Clements’ idea of a niche is appealing, we have to ask ourselves `What kind of niche would that be?”’ said Rep. Steve Conway, R-Tacoma.

Aside from a possible license fee reduction, none of the lawmakers spoke publicly of any concrete changes that might help bingo halls.

This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEXT The Legislative Round Table on Gambling Policy will conduct three more hearings this year on a variety of other gambling subjects. It is expected to submit a report to the Legislature for the 2000 session.