Archive for the ‘Gambling’ Category

After the Governor’s presser, and the usual round of retirement speeches and wide arrays of legislative mutual congratulations, your humble correspondent had a chance to sit down with Chris Mann of Veritas Rex and Josh Gillespie of Hoosier Access to talk with Lieutenant Governor Becky Skillman.

Photos of the event are available here.

More after the leap.
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As Jim notes a couple posts below, the social conservatives have awoken to the possibility of yet another significant expansion of gambling here in Indiana (to say nothing of it being bad public policy for a variety of reasons that I have already blogged about).

Urging 80,000 plus people to contact the Governor and tell him to veto something is a lot, particularly when he needs those same folks come November if he wants to keep his job.

I don’t agree entirely with the Indiana American Family Association’s reasoning behind opposing the bill, but I agree with their objective.

Whether on moral, fiscal, or ethical grounds, HR 1153 is bad legislation and should be vetoed by Mitch Daniels.

They’re even starting to pick up on it in the letter and opinion sections of the newspapers.

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Governor Mitch Daniels Needs to Hear from You About Gambling Expansion Bill
Urge Indiana Governor Daniels to veto House Bill 1153

Dear Jim ,

AFA of Indiana Director Micah Clark has notified us that House Bill 1153 has passed the legislature and is on the way to the Governor’s office for his approval or veto.

This legislation is yet another expansion of the gambling industry in Indiana, a state by which some reports indicate, is already among the top five gambling states in the nation in terms of revenue. The last thing Indiana needs is more gambling.

HB 1153 allows bars to create new gambling games through pulls tabs and tip board gaming devices. Allowing people and perhaps those with gambling-addictive tendencies to gamble while consuming alcoholic beverages is certainly not in the public good as a matter of state policy.

This is yet another gambling expansion measure passed by the legislature. Here is what State Senator Mike Delph said of this legislation. “Indiana is addicted to gambling and needs to go into rehab…Last year slot machines, this year pull-tabs, next year, who knows what? Greed has no boundaries.”

HB 1153 barely passed the Indiana Senate with only 26 of 50 votes. The Governor’s veto of the bill could delay or kill this proposal for this year.

Take Action

Click here to send Governor Mich Daniels and urge him to veto House Bill 1153.

P.S.-AFA of Indiana will be hosting author and scholar Dinesh D’Souza at Crossroads Bible College on Monday evening March 24th, 6 PM at the college - 601 N. Shortridge Rd. on the East side of Indianapolis. This is a free event. He will speak about his new book, “What’s So Great About Christianity?” that addresses the flood of a new aggressive atheism that has risen in recent years. Dinesh is a former policy analyst for President Ronald Reagan. Click here for more information about this important event.

Thank you for caring enough to get involved. If you feel our efforts are worthy of support, would you consider making a small tax-deductible contribution? Click here to make a donation.

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman American Family Association

If the state of Indiana is addicted to gambling, then the Senate on Wednesday took a big snort of a line of something.

From the Courier-Journal:

INDIANAPOLIS – Customers could buy paper pull-tabs and participate in raffles and other small-stakes wagering at taverns under legislation the Senate narrowly approved today.

Sen. Jim Arnold, D-LaPorte, said House Bill 1153 provides a “fair, level playing field” for bar owners who have been hurt by laws that allow nonprofit veterans and social clubs to offer small-stakes wagering while cracking down on illegal gambling in for-profit establishments.

HB 1153 passed 26-21 and now moves back to the House, where members will consider changes made by the Senate.

The bill’s author, Rep. Dennis Tyler, D-Muncie, said he intends to send the bill to a conference committee where members of the House and Senate will try to work out a compromise.

First of all, the “fair, level playing field” that Jim Arnold thinks is so great is going to hurt the charitable organizations that last year’s expansion of gaming was supposedly designed to help.

When every corner bar has pull-tabs, people are not going to bother to go to the VFW across town.

Second, the taxation levels being placed upon this new massive expansion of gambling are negligible. One estimate I saw said that the state will get new revenue in the area of anywhere from $5 to $25 million; Matt Bell (R-Avilla) said in committee that his estimate was $14 to $18 million. Both estimates are so small that even its proponents do not try to make the laughable proposition that it is good for the state’s finances.

Third, the level of taxation and its other provisions show the hypocrisy and expose the lie inherent in the claims of Mr. Arnold and Mr. Tyler that this legislation has been put forward to create a “fair, level playing field.”

Indeed–and Indiana Gaming Commission Director Ernie Yelton noted as much in statements about the bill–businesses will be book their purchases of the “paper games” as expenses; charities and other organizations presently allowed to sell them do not have that ability.

This could, perversely, result in businesses actually (by virtue of booking more expenses and thus having less income for taxes) paying less in taxes than before and potentially seeing the state getting less revenue overall.

Accordingly, the field will disproportionately favor the businesses, not the charities; the legislation makes a mockery of the claim of creating a “fair, level playing field.”

Fourth, HR 1153, as I have mentioned earlier, is a special interest creation that will create what amounts to a de facto pull-tab printing monopoly in the state of Indiana for a company, the Muncie Novelty Company / Indiana Ticket Company, that is based in the district of Dennis Tyler (D, Muncie) and is apparently one of the only such companies in Indiana (if not the only such company) that prints pull tabs.

So the Senate has stabbed the charitable groups it was trying to help last year in the back.

It has approved a massive expansion of gambling.

And it has caved into the special interests with the legislation’s “25% from Indiana” provision designed to help a business in the sponsor’s district.

I expected this sort of bad policy cronyism from the House Democrats.

I did not expect it from the Senate Republicans.

Name and shame after the leap; here are the 26 craven worms, err, senators (16 Democrats, 10 Republicans) that voted for this piece of crap.
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When his committee wouldn’t approve a casino gambling amendment, Kentucky Democrat House Speaker Jody Richards sacked one member of the committee by fiat and appointed two new members sure to do his bidding.

From the Courier-Journal:

FRANKFORT, Ky. — A bill to legalize casino gambling survived a series of bizarre legislative twists yesterday that revealed a major split within the leadership of the House Democratic majority.

In the morning, two versions of the proposed constitutional amendment — which would authorize nine casinos and is Gov. Steve Beshear’s top priority — failed to win approval from a House committee.

But yesterday afternoon House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, led a rare move to change the membership of that committee and get the bill to the House floor.

Richards removed Rep. Dottie Sims, D-Horse Cave, because she did not vote for a version of the amendment that he supports.

Then he and two other House leaders added two new members to the panel — over the objections of Speaker Pro Tem Larry Clark, D-Okolona, who supports a different version of the amendment.

“I want to get that amendment out of committee, and we intend to do it,” Richards, D-Bowling Green, told reporters later.

But Clark called Richards’ move “the cheapest form of petty politics I’ve seen up here in 24 years — to take a member off a committee because she did not vote the way the speaker wanted.”

Sims was furious and almost in tears over her dismissal. “It’s communist,” she said of her ouster. “… The leadership is in disarray. They’re split.”

Depending on how you look at it, The Hair is either clever enough to think to pack his committees with loyalists in advance, or he’s not yet advanced to the whole dictatorial “sack the opponents and rig the vote” level just yet.

I’d bet on the former; yet another area (though an ignominious one) where Indiana is ahead of Kentucky.
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Just as notions of approving casino gambling seem to be “on life support” in Kentucky, the General Assembly in Indianapolis seems determined to blow the doors off any semblance of limiting gambling in Indiana with idiotic and stupid measures such as pull-tabs.

Why don’t we just let bars have slot machines, too?

And maybe let them run blackjack games also.

Heck, we can be like Nevada, with slots in the airports, slots in the rest areas on the highways, slots in fast food places, and slots everywhere else.

Not only is this sort of thing a massive expansion of gambling, it is effectively the granting of a market exclusivity and anti-competition measure.

All of this is so that a company that prints pull tabs (apparently the only one in Indiana) can be guaranteed 25% of the new market that will be generated.

Hidden within this bill is a provision (Article 36, Chapter 5, Section 5, Subsection C) that requires that a set percentage of all pull-tabs sold in Indiana be also printed by companies based in Indiana:

a distributor must obtain at least twenty-five percent (25%) of the type II gambling games purchased by the distributor from a manufacturer that is domiciled in Indiana.

This measure was crafted by lobbyists for the primary benefit one of the only companies (if not the only company) based Indiana that actually prints pull-tabs.

This legislation will be a staggering windfall for them, as it will give them a ready market close at hand composed of a guaranteed proportion of sales for the entire state.

That’s insane.
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State Representative Dan Leonard should be commended by Hoosier conservatives today for his courageous vote against expanded gambling in Indiana. Leonard joined conservatives like Rep. Jackie Walorski in voting against a bill yesterday to allow pull-tabs and other non-skill related gambling devices in bars and taverns. The bill, HB1153, passed 62 to 36 unfortunately. Why is this important? Leonard has two primary opponents, one of whom has been working overtime to paint Leonard as anything other than a conservative, which he is. This bill, like many other examples, reveals a common sense conservative in Leonard who deserves support from Hoosier conservatives.

Say it ain’t so! This from Micah Clark’s American Family Association of Indiana E-newsletter today:

Coming to a Northeastern Hoosier City Near You

One of the few areas of the state that the predatory gambling industry has not yet invaded is Northeast Indiana. That may change with the 2008 legislative session. According to recent news reports, Senator Robert Meeks from LaGrange is going to file a bill that would allow a Gary casino to move from Lake Michigan to a lake in northeastern Indiana’s Steuben County. Meeks was approached by Don Barden, who owns two side-by-side Majestic Star casinos in Gary, about the possibility of relocating one of his licenses. We will let you know when the bill is filed and assigned to a committee.

You can reach State Senator Robert Meeks at 317.232.9400.

Update:  More from the Indy Star here. 

By: Brian Sikma

Part of Pat Bauer’s rebate check plan for softening the blow of the property tax increase was funded by the addition of 2,000 slot machines each to the Shelbyville and Anderson horse racing tracks.  While statistics show that home foreclosure and bankruptcy rates are higher in and around counties with casinos, these facts didn’t faze the Speaker.  It is rather hard to conceive where logic comes in on funding this rebate check proposal.  We have a property tax problem in the state, and we have citizens gambling their money away and therefore unable to pay taxes, and the Speaker proposes and passes a “relief” measure that increases the level of gambling (a long-term thing) to pay for immediate property tax relief (a short-term thing).

If future efforts to revamp Indiana’s tax system rely on increasing the state’s already to-great-reliance on gambling revenue, then Indiana’s financial health will be at the mercy of an industry that at best can classify itself as entertainment.  Should gamblers have financial difficulties in their personal budgets, it is likely that they will either quit gambling or cut back on the amount of gambling.  If they choose to do neither and decide to gratify their desires without any regard to their civic obligation to pay taxes, their tax bill will not get paid.  Any of these three options will result in a decrease in tax revenue, and this in turn will force the state and local jurisdictions to cut back on government services (admittedly this would not be all that bad) or start running on deficits.  Eventually as this situation unfolded, government entities would be forced to cut essential and legitimate services or continue to rack up large deficits. 

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