THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507200012
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Whether riverboat casinos should be invited into Virginia is a question that the Virginia electorate should decide. But if the question is put, Virginians should recognize that the gambling industry will spend gobs of money to persuade them to say yes to floating casinos.
Gambling is, first and foremost, about money - lots of money. The industry is well-heeled. It has spent a bundle to lobby the General Assembly to ask Virginia voters to decide for or against riverboat casinos. Some 18 gambling-related companies and ad-hoc pro-casino groups collectively ponied up $821,166 last year in Virginia, more than twice what they spent in the state in 1993.
The 1994 total, derived from data on forms filed by lobbyists in Richmond, is the highest recorded amount yet spent by a special interest to legally influence the General Assembly. It is much higher than the $444,000 outlay by Walt Disney Co., which wanted the state to invest millions of dollars in roads and other infrastructure to service its projected U.S.-history theme park in Northern Virginia (preservationists' protests killed the project).
The 1994 gambling-linked expenditure in Virginia also exceeded the $522,000 spent by the National Rifle Association in 1993 in its failed effort to prevent enactment of Gov. L. Douglas Wilder's one-per-person-per-month limit on handgun sales.
An organizer of Virginians Deserve Better, a group opposed to riverboat casinos, says the rebuffs dealt the riverboat-casino backers two years in a row should persuade them to concentrate their efforts on other states. They may do just that. The Washington Post reports that the gambling industry is considering the prospect for casinos in Maryland.
Even if a referendum were approved by the Virginia General Assembly, persuading the electorate to accept riverboat casinos could be an uphill fight. Many Virginians find gambling distasteful. They regard it as degrading, wasteful and immoral and likely to create more social and economic problems than it solves.
Others fear the corrupting influence of gambling on politics. The danger is not payoffs to pols - the industry is strictly regulated. But the bonanza that gambling promises and often delivers generates pressures for more and more of it.
The riverboat-casino legislation proposed by Democratic Norfolk Del. Jerrauld C. Jones is suitably cautious. It would sharply limit the number of riverboats and require them to sail before customers could gamble. This modest flotilla provided for in the Jones bill could not appear in Virginia until a majority of voters approved them in a referendum and a majority of local voters in any locality where they would tie up also gave the nod.
Enthusiasm for riverboat casinos might run high in Hampton Roads' cities because of the substantial tax revenue and other economic benefits that would flow from them to local and state treasuries. But even some who believe that riverboat casinos could be added easily to the recreational, entertainment and tourism mix in Hampton Roads fear that demand for more casinos would follow introduction of a small fleet and that politicians would find demand for more gambling irresistible. They could be right.
Virginia's electorate welcomed the state-run lottery. But if some Virginians are troubled by the lavish spending by private enterprises bent on bringing riverboat casinos to the state and by what that might portend if they come, surely their concern, which we share, is understandable. by CNB