Casino Gambling will have a major social impact

No matter who wins the 11 slots licenses up for grabs this week, the introduction of casino gambling will affect the commonwealth and its largest cities for decades — if not generations. The seven members of the state Gaming Control Board plan to vote Wednesday on awarding $50 million licenses for six slots parlors at tracks and five stand-alone casinos across the state, including two in Philadelphia and one in Pittsburgh. Soon, Pennsylvania will have a legitimate claim to being the Nevada of the East. It can have as many as 61,000 slot machines, bringing in a conservative estimate of $3 billion a year for the state — including $1 billion a year to offset property taxes. That much gambling is bound to transform not only state spending and economics, but even the way residents see themselves. ‘Pittsburgh was a steel town, and then it’s a bio-tech center,” said Ron Porter, co-chair of the Pittsburgh Gaming Task Force. “And now with gaming in the heart of the city … with an estimated 6 million visitors a year, we’re going to be a gaming center. And that’s going to change how the city defines itself.” State lawmakers authorized 14 casino licenses, but one license is tied to an unbuilt harness racing track and two others are reserved for resort casinos, for which there are no applicants. In Philadelphia, five groups are seeking two licenses. And statewide, five groups — two from the Poconos, and one each from Bethlehem, Allentown and Gettysburg — are vying for two at-large licenses. For Western Pennsylvania, the board is expected to award permanent casino licenses to The Meadows Racetrack and Casino in Washington County and Presque Isle Downs near Erie. Both have conditional licenses and plan to open casinos early next year. The board’s biggest decision for the region will be choosing among the three bidders for the Pittsburgh slots license: St. Louis-based Isle of Capri Casinos, for an Uptown casino; Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, for Harrah’s Station Square Casino; and Detroit-based Majestic Star Casino, for a casino on the North Shore. The results of slots will be good and bad, said the Rev. Eugene Winkler, a gambling opponent who serves on the Illinois Gaming Board. Casinos make “obscene” amounts of money, he said, and much of that gets passed on to the host communities. Slots in Pennsylvania will raise money to lower taxes, erase old debts and pay for projects — possibly including a new Uptown hockey arena. But increased gambling also is expected to drive higher rates of addiction, and some people who can little afford to waste money might drop dollars into slot machines on the promise of big payoffs. “It’s going to have a huge social impact,” Winkler said. “I can see some positive things, but a lot of negatives also. There’s a tremendous amount of misspent money.” For architects of the state’s gambling law, this week marks a milestone for a proposal that languished for years before finally passing in July 2004. “It will be a great day in Pennsylvania,” said Mike Manzo, chief of staff for House Democratic leader H. William DeWeese, Greene County, who helped write the gambling law. “The dream of property tax cuts will become a reality.” For opponents it signals a defeat, a moment they still want to avoid. Dianne Berlin, coordinator of CasinoFreePA, said she holds out hope for the board or Gov. Ed Rendell to issue a one-year moratorium on awarding licenses. “If they really want to consider the health and well-being of Pennsylvanians, they’d give it,” she said. “The negative impact of casinos really hasn’t been considered.” Once Pennsylvania awards the licenses and more casinos start opening — Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs in Wilkes-Barre opened last month with a conditional slots license — the state never can go back, said Greg Caruso, who teaches a gambling-related course at Carnegie Mellon University, called “Culture of Chance.” “Probably 20 years from now, we’ll see a situation where whatever you would like to do in terms of gaming will be available to you,” Caruso said. “I don’t see the tide being stemmed in any way.” Even from Las Vegas, industry experts are looking at the expansion of casino gambling — once thought to be a taboo reserved only for Sin City — into Pennsylvania not as a threat but with awe, said Michael Green, history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada. “Very few people in Nevada expected gambling to be that big,” Green said. “It was part of a broader effort to attract tourists who might become residents. It wasn’t seen as a panacea.”