Gambling offers no solution for state budget crisis
Tuesday, March 4, 2003 9:20 AM PST
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E-mail this articleA long list of former and current Washington officials have formed a new organization -- Citizens Against Gambling Expansion -- to hold the line on gambling in the state. They hope to persuade legislators that more gambling is not the answer to Washington's current budget crisis.
We hope they succeed, but know that could be difficult. Lawmakers will be sorely tempted to take what may appear to be an easy way out of their budget dilemma. Two troubling proposals already are being advanced as partial fixes for the state's $2.4 billion budget shortfall.
One proposal would allow 19,000 new video slot machines at card rooms, restaurants, taverns and other venues throughout the state. The other would create a state-owned electronic gambling system with slots and keno booths statewide.
Neither of these proposals represent the "easy" revenue source that some legislative proponents imagine. As former Gov. Booth Gardner, a co-chair of CAGE, noted Friday, "Research shows that expanded gambling comes with high budgetary and human costs."
The state, unlike players, is assured a payoff. That's true. But anyone viewing this revenue as a quick and politically painless fix for Washington's budget woes is as deluded as those gamblers who hope to retire on their winnings.
It's a sucker's game for players and legislative sponsors of expanded gambling, alike. Ask Oregon officials.
That state has invested heavily in gambling. Oregon's more than 9,000 video poker machines rake in tens of millions of dollars annually. The state's take has grown dramatically each of the past several years.
No matter. Oregon this year is struggling to patch together a budget that mortgages the future and further slashes funding for schools, law enforcement and other programs and services.
Precious few, if any, Oregonians are taking anything away from the state-sponsored games they're playing. Certainly, we don't hear of many striking it rich at a video poker machine or taking early retirement with lottery winnings. Instead, we hear of more than 80,000 problem gamblers in the state and the drain they represent on the economy.
Washington has its own gambling problem. An estimated 10 percent of the state's some 300,000 gamblers are problem gamblers. One national study calculates that each one of those problem gamblers costs the state about $3,000 annually in creditor losses, productivity declines and demands on social services.
"Expanded gambling is a gimmick with hidden consequences and costs," says Gardner. "It is not a solution to our state's fiscal problems."
Indeed, it is not. Gambling is no way to finance state government. It ought to be the last place the Legislature looks for new revenue.
Sadly, it's the first and only place many legislators have looked this year to date. It's our hope that the efforts of Citizens Against Gambling Expansion will prompt them to look again. The state doesn't need more gambling and the additional problems that would bring.
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