Gambling news from http://www.timeswv.com/
FAIRMONT — State Lottery Commission officials can point to growing revenues from the “limited video lottery” games.
From July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, gross profits divided by the state and machine owners went up $50 million, climbing from $304 million to $354 million.
The state’s 46 percent share (after 2 percent for counties and municipalities and 2 percent for the Lottery’s administrative costs are deducted) goes to the state’s Excess Lottery Revenue fund. Meanwhile, machine owners walked away with $195 million.
Video gambling helps support the lottery’s chief mission: Providing funds and programs for education, senior citizens, tourism and, since July 2001, economic development.
But critics — Mike Queen of Clarksburg and Sen. Mike Oliverio, D-Monongalia and Marion, are among the most prominent in the region — have never let up their fire since the popular computerized games became available in December 2001.
“I think the market has been saturated,” Queen said. He owns a small public relations firm in Charleston and also a small trucking firm in southern West Virginia. He was recently elected to the Harrison County School Board and is currently embroiled in the controversy over the “Jesus Portrait” at Bridgeport High School. Queen is leading the fight to keep the portrait hanging.
He also is a leader in West Virginians Citizens Against Gambling Expansion or CAGE. Queen describes the group as a “loose-knit coalition of churches and some individuals” who are opposed to the expansion of gambling in the state.
When the Legislature is in session, Queen monitors gambling-related legislation.
He and Oliverio said the state is now in Year Five of a 10-year experiment with the limited video lottery program.
“In four years, the Limited Video Lottery Act will sunset because the licenses on the machines were sold for 10 years,” Queen said.
“CAGE is focused on doing away with all of the machines save for those in fraternal and other non-profit civic clubs,” he said.
Keeping about 2,400 permits and doing away with the remaining 6,600 permits would be good for communities, Queen believes.
While some have proposed a horse trade — elimination of many of the video game machines in return for allowing casino games at the state’s four race tracks – CAGE is ready to oppose that option, Queen said.
“We don’t support table game legislation. I’ll guarantee you that if we have full table games at the tracks, the next thing you know the fraternal clubs will be arguing ‘just give us blackjack,’” he said.
Supporters of video gambling claimed that when the race tracks won the right to offer video gambling that the machines would not spread beyond the tracks, Queen said.
“Now we have 12,000 race track slot and video machines and 8,000 video gambling machines at 1,600 locations around the state,” he said.
CAGE is not calling for the total elimination of gambling, he said. Such a ban will simply drive it back underground, he explained.
“We know we live in a world where gambling is going to exist,” he said. “But we believe we have enough.”
Oliverio has questioned video gambling from the start.
“We’re in the middle of a 10-year experiment, and I would think by now a great many more West Virginians share my position,” he said.
“This year, North Carolina banned the type of machines we have in West Virginia. South Carolina has already banned them,” Oliverio said.
“Even Pennsylvania, which is preparing to license 15,000 similar machines, is only going to allow them in about a dozen locations across their whole state,” he said.
“Meanwhile, we’re approaching 1,600 locations all across our state.”
Gambling is not the answer to the state’s need to build a better economy, Oliverio said. In the past, he has compared reliance on its proceeds to building on quicksand.
“This is not good public policy for the state,” he said.
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