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State doesn’t need a new layer of gambling

4 min read

Imagine that there was an epidemic across Pennsylvania of people illegally selling alcohol, taking business away from legitimate sellers such as bars, distributors and state stores. Would the reaction of our elected officials in Harrisburg be to say, “What the heck. The criminals are already selling the stuff. Let’s just make it legal?” Of course not, but that’s precisely the kind of reasoning some members of the state House of Representatives are using in their bid to create a massive expansion of legalized gambling in the commonwealth.

Republican Reps. Mark Mustio of Allegheny County and Kurt Masser of Northumberland County, along with Democratic Rep. Mike Sturla of Lancaster County, had a news conference earlier this week to promote their proposal to put tens of thousands of video gaming terminals in pretty much any place in Pennsylvania that has a liquor license, including bars, restaurants, hotels, truck stops and VFW posts.

They held their news conference near a downtown Harrisburg convenience store where they claimed an illegal gambling machine was housed. “Talk about an absolutely frustrating, textbook example of unregulated gambling,” said Mustio. “The convenience store across the street from this location contains a ‘smart’ gambling machine where individuals of all ages, from children to senior citizens, can walk in and gamble. Perhaps even more frustrating, when it comes to closing our state’s budget deficit, absolutely none of this smart gambling machine revenue is being collected by the commonwealth.”

f Mustio and his partners are aware illegal gambling is going on in this location, wouldn’t you think the police could pretty easily arrest the operators of the store and prosecute them for the gambling violation? We believe it would be a better approach to crack down on the widespread illegal gambling that is going on, fairly openly, rather than throw up our hands I and expand gambling again across the state.

Making gambling machines widely available, and legal, would absolutely have a negative effect on the state lottery, and also on existing legal gambling operations around Pennsylvania, including the casino at The Meadows. It also would extract a social cost, making it even easier for people who have a problem with gambling to be parted from their money, harming them and potentially their families.

People with a gambling problem can self-exclude from the state’s dozen casinos, but if there are gambling machines in bars and restaurants here, there and pretty much everywhere, it gets much tougher to keep the addiction at bay. This legislative push is a desperate move by desperate people.

The state House and Senate approved a spending plan for the current fiscal year way back in June, but we can’t say that our lawmakers approved a budget, because they never came to an agreement on how to pay for their proposed spending. That’s why, with November right around the corner, there is still debate in Harrisburg over how to generate more money to balance a budget that is way out of whack.

Some in the House are saying they won’t agree to any deal that doesn’t include the video gaming terminals, while the folks in the Senate are equally steadfast in their support of a plan to create new mini-casinos around the state. Either way, it’s a bad approach to government by people who are simply trying to avoid tough decisions about spending and taxes, and thus avoid angering the people who will decide whether they get to return to their high-paying, part-time jobs in the Capitol.

Gambling machines in private businesses are illegal now. Let’s keep it that way and do a better job of punishing those who violate existing laws. And at the same time, let’s demand more from our elected officials in Harrisburg.

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