Lawmakers seek gambling reform before slots
HARRISBURG – A hue and cry has sounded from the halls of the Capitol to clean up the state’s two-year-old gambling law before slots licenses are issued in late September. But a reasoned response to the widely recognized need for a fix has, of late, become an election year game of political football.
The proposals are out there, but lawmakers and the governor have been arguing about who is responsible for making the first move to getting them through the Legislature.
It all started in early July with a showdown on the Senate floor between powerful Philadelphia Democrat Sen. Vince Fumo and the lame duck Senate Republican Leader Chip Brightbill. Fumo held up final passage of the state’s $26 billion budget for several hours by unsuccessfully trying to push a gambling reform bill to a vote.
It didn’t happen because Republicans insisted they weren’t ready that late in the budget season to tie up all the bill’s loose ends.
But now a group of senators from that same Republican caucus are insisting it’s urgent to enact reforms before the state’s regulatory board issues its first set of slots licenses to racetracks in late September.
Sen. Jane Orie, an Allegheny County Republican, is leading the charge by demanding that Rendell call the Legislature back from their summer door-knocking into a special session on gambling reform.
And on Thursday, a handful of Republicans issued a 21-bill litany of gambling reform measures, insisting that Rendell say by Labor Day which proposals he’ll support. They’re also asking the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to hold off issuing licenses until late October.
Rendell’s GOP gubernatorial opponent, Lynn Swann, is also jumping into the fray. At a press conference in Pittsburgh on Friday, Swann berated Rendell for “refus(ing) to stand up and fix what Republicans and Democrats alike agree is a broken system.”
Republicans say they’re sickened by news of well-heeled children investing in gambling companies, as happened recently when a slots supplier license was awarded to a company owned, in part, by the minor children of one of the most prominent Harrisburg lobbyists, Steve Wojdak. And with a slots supplier license being awarded to a company owned by the chairman of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Mitchell Rubin.
Or all the criminal charges filed against gaming board staff since its inception, from bar fights to allegations of homicide.
“The last thing I want to see happen is licenses go out without all these (reforms) in place because then we’ve lost a tremendous chance for real genuine reform because the ship has sailed for us,” said Orie. “That’s where I’ve been imploring the governor, do a special session, take the lead on this. Time is of essence.”
But in a feisty exchange between Orie and Rendell on Pittsburgh’s popular KDKA 1020 talk radio station this week, the governor insisted the onus was on Republican leaders to be the first to act.
“Somehow they need a special session for me to tell them to get back to work?” Rendell said on the radio. “All Sen. Orie should do is contact (Republican) leadership and say let’s come back and take care of this. It’s something they can do themselves.”
Christopher Craig, senior counsel to Fumo, said many of the reforms Republicans are peddling today were in the bill that their leadership refused to take up during the budget.
“This urgency, where was it in June?” Craig said. “There was no secret that the board was going to be working and plowing ahead to issue licenses. And every supplier license, every manufacture license and decision has been supported by the Republican caucus’ appointee to the [gaming control] board. A lot of this is election year campaigning against the governor.”
But Republicans insist that the governor needs to be more involved because last time a bill reached his desk, in November 2004, he vetoed it.
“We don’t want to do another exercise in futility to say what we want and throw it on his desk and have it vetoed and get nothing accomplished,” said Sen. Jake Corman, a Centre County Republican.
Senate Republican Whip Jeff Piccola of Dauphin County said, “We’ve given him a little elementary school book here on what he can be for. All he has to do is check yes, yes, yes and no, no wherever he’s for or against.”
“Don’t throw it back on us. He’s the one who advocated for this law. He’s the one who wanted gaming in Pennsylvania. He’s the one who signed it into law. He’s the one who vetoed the prior bill that came to him. So hold his feet to the fire a little bit.”
Rendell’s spokeswoman Kate Philips said the governor always has been clear on what he would support, most recently in a letter he sent to Orie and other senators spelling out what he’d like to see. Among them, barring public officials and their immediate family members from owning any financial interest in a gambling operation, extending racketeering laws to cover the gambling industry, and banning political contributions from family members of those who own a stake in gambling operations, according to Rendell’s July 31 letter.
“The governor has been very specific time and time again,” said Philips. “This is a bit of gamesmanship at this point. Calling for a special session in the middle of the summer when they could easily return on their own, taking an issue that’s hot in the press right now and monopolizing it. It’s politics, but at the end of the day they know full well Ed Rendell has been crystal clear on what he’ll support.”
In the meantime, the state’s gambling regulatory board doesn’t seem moved to further delaying issuing licenses.
“At this stage we’re moving forward with the licensing process,” said Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board spokesman Nick Hays.
Alison Hawkes can be reached at 717-705-6330 or begin ahawkes@calkins-media.com ahawkes@calkins-media.com end
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