NEWS SOURCE: http://www.thenewstribune.com
Tacoma is finally scheduled for closure – in more ways than one – on the question of casino gambling.
The City Council’s decision Tuesday to hold a Sept. 19 election on an emergency medical services levy automatically put a casino-funded initiative on the same ballot.
The initiative – which would keep the city’s four “enhanced cardrooms” in business – initially missed a February date with the voters after the auditor’s office couldn’t verify its signatures on time. It has since been waiting for the first available municipal election.
So expect, before long, a well-bankrolled campaign featuring casino employees worried about the loss of their jobs if the initiative fails.
The campaign will not mention that those workers – as well as the owners paying for the ads – have known for years that the casinos were supposed to be shut down last New Year’s Day. The City Council in 1999 gave them a full six years to operate and recoup their investments, the longest such grace period in the state. If anyone does wind up without a job, it won’t be for lack of notice.
Nor will the campaign mention that the initiative itself is almost certainly illegal and headed for defeat in the courts if it does pass. That’s because it purports to forbid any new casinos from opening in Tacoma even as it permits the existing ones to keep going. State law, however, doesn’t allow cities to permit a favored few gaming establishments to stay open while barring their potential competitors.
In Washington, the power to license new commercial casinos is vested solely in the state Gambling Commission; cities and counties can only ban them all or permit them all, not ban some and permit others.
Why would anyone propose such a blatantly illegal initiative? Probably because the pro-gambling option actually allowed by state law – opening the city to any and all casinos, present and future – wouldn’t have a prayer of getting past the voters.
The initiative appears to be just about buying time – keeping the profits rolling in until the inevitable reckoning with the voters or the courts.
In this, the casino owners have had more than their share of help from Pierce County Superior Court Gary Steiner, who for baffling reasons has ordered the city not to shut down the casinos until the vote can be held.
There is no question about the legality of the 1999 ordinance. Nor is there any question that it reflected a political consensus to phase out casino gambling in Tacoma: While it passed by a narrow 5-4 majority, the four dissenters wanted to shut down the casinos immediately, not give them a six-year grace period.
The City of Tacoma, rightly, has appealed Steiner’s decision. Let’s hope the state Court of Appeals can decide the case before Sept. 19. If city ordinances are to be taken seriously, this should be a referendum on whether to reopen, not close, Tacoma’s casinos.
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