State’s gambling out of control

TACOMA – It’s noon on a Tuesday, and already the parking lot is crowded.

In the smoky dimness, scores of people stare into slot-style machines. Some hunker down for the long haul, others drift about, trying their luck on games with names like Cleopatra, Penny Pigout and Texas Tea.

There are more than 2,000 machines in the Emerald Queen Casino, a dimly lit, slightly smoky chamber longer than two football fields. On the edges of the room, dealers stand ready at roulette, blackjack and pai gow poker tables.

A recording of James Brown serenades gamblers.

“Whoa, I feel good,” he sings.

Once banned by the state constitution, gambling in Washington has mushroomed from a roughly $45 million industry in the mid-1970s to more than $1.7 billion last year, according to the state gambling commission. Tribal gambling net receipts are now estimated at more than $1 billion a year – three times bigger than what card rooms take in, and six times more than the state lottery.

“The trends we see will continue up,” state Gambling Commission Director Rick Day told lawmakers last week. “Tribal gambling will lead the way.”

But with the public apparently leery of further expansion, state lawmakers are now trying to figure out if, and how, they can limit further growth.

In the statehouse, “Nobody wants to see any more gambling, nobody that I know of,” said Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Seattle.

And yet it grows.

Much of the industry’s expansion came not from sweeping legislation, but from a series of seemingly-minor changes in law and court rulings:

“ The 1973 state Gambling Act allowed pull tabs and bingo.

“ A recession in 1982 led to the state lottery, which would be the basis years later of the tribes’ push for slot-style machines.

“ A 1987 Supreme Court ruling launched a fledgling tribal casino industry that surged a decade later, when another court ruling and subsequent decisions by state officials gave the green light to the tribes’ cash cow: slot-style machines.

“ And a 1997 push to “level the playing field” by allowing house-banked card rooms spawned a surge of 95 non-tribal “mini-casinos.”

Today, the Spokane Tribe of Indians is negotiating a major new gambling agreement with the state. The state lottery, trying to raise ever more money in an increasingly competitive environment, recently mailed out coupons for free samples of scratch- and lottery tickets. And struggling taverns, bowling alleys and charity bingo halls continue to appeal for tribal-type machines that some say are their only hope for staying in business.

“I’ve been in the industry 32 years, and I’ve never seen it so bad,” said Clyde Bock, with a Big Brothers/Big Sisters Bingo hall in Burien.

But faced with an annual flurry of “me, too” requests from taverns, Indian tribes, bingo halls and card rooms, lawmakers, the governor and the state gambling commission are trying to figure out what to do. It’s clear that most Washingtonians don’t want more gambling – a 2004 initiative to allow non-tribal slot-style machines was defeated by a landslide – yet it’s not at all clear how to curtail the industry’s growth.

“It’s kind of like closing the barn door after the horses are gone,” Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, said recently.

Lawmakers last week held the first of several hearings on Washington gambling. Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles said the goal is to consider what changes, if any, should be considered by the Legislature in January.

Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt says the Legislature doesn’t have much say in the fastest-growing gambling arena: tribal gambling. Lawmakers can only comment on, not veto, the compacts negotiated between a governor and a tribe. So he’s skeptical that the committee will do much.

“The growth is all coming with casinos,” said Hewitt. “That’s a compact issue with the governor.”

King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, a longtime critic of expanding gambling, has some suggestions:

“ The state should fight any more proposals for off-reservation gambling, “to keep those large casinos out of the urban core,” he said. “The voters said ‘No, I think that we have enough gambling and should hold the line.’ “

“ The state should resist the urge to negotiate for a cut of tribal casino profits – termed “revenue sharing.” It’s not a good idea, Maleng said, for government to be getting a share of the gambling it’s supposed to regulate.

“ And the governor and Legislature should deal directly with proponents like the tribes, rather than using the Gambling Commission or other intermediaries.

Rep. Bruce Chandler, R-Granger, said lawmakers face a paradox: voters’ repeated rejection of expanded gambling “and the steady growth of what appears to be consumer demand for gambling.”