Change considered in gaming-licensing law

State legislators pushing to reform Pennsylvania's gaming law want to make it harder for felons to get casino licenses by requiring regulators to consider expunged criminal records.

The call for change follows a disclosure last week that Michael J. Thomas, head of a Connecticut tribe that is a partner in the Foxwoods Casino project, got a license despite a law banning felons from entering the gaming business within 15 years of serving a sentence.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board issued a license to Thomas in 2006 - only 12 years after he finished a drug-dealing sentence in Rhode Island.

According to the board, a 1979 state law barring the use of expunged records by licensing agencies prevented the gaming board from acting against him. Rhode Island expunged the criminal record of Thomas, who became eligible for relief in 2004.

State Sen. Jane Orie, the Senate majority whip from the Pittsburgh area, plans to introduce a bill soon to change that, aide Michael Sarfert said yesterday. Her proposed reform, he said, would require the gaming board to consider even expunged records in deciding whether to award licenses.

In a statement to The Inquirer, Orie said, "Being licensed is a privilege, not a right, and we should require disclosure to and the review of all material facts, including expungements."

Foxwoods has a license to build one of Philadelphia's two slots parlors. Thomas heads the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, which owns 30 percent of the venture and which would run the casino. The remaining interest is held by individuals and charitable trusts.

Originally, investors planned to open a waterfront casino in South Philadelphia. But community resistance and delays forced the partners to offer to move it to the Gallery mall in Center City.

A former prosecutor, Orie has argued that the more recent gaming law of 2004 should override the 1979 law's restrictions on using expunged material.

R. Douglas Sherman, acting chief counsel for the gaming board, said the matter was not that simple.

When two statutes address the same subject, he said, "they should be construed together if possible . . . You don't simply take the more recent one."

Thomas was arrested in 1987 on drug-dealing charges in Rhode Island. In 1988, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison and put on probation until 1994.

Sherman said the language of the gaming act excluded from the definition of

conviction

any action that has been expunged. Whether the Thomas matter is viewed from the 1979 law or the more recent gaming act, he said, "what was done here was accurate and correct."

"We're not going to argue this from a policy standpoint," he said. "That's the choice of the legislature."

New Jersey does not have the same restrictions on using expunged information.

In New Jersey, felons can be considered for licenses 10 years after conviction but they must turn over all expunged information when applying for a license.

Most important, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission would be free to consider that information in the licensing process, said Frank Catania, a gaming-law expert and former director of the gaming enforcement division of the New Jersey Attorney General's Office.

"Pennsylvania is a little different from everyone else," Catania said.

Pennsylvania State Sen. Lawrence Farnese Jr., a Democrat whose district includes the Foxwoods project, said the state needed to adopt a policy similar to New Jersey's.

"This issue with Foxwoods has revealed a deficiency in the legislation that needs to be remedied," he said.

State Sen. John Rafferty, a Republican from a district encompassing parts of Montgomery, Chester and Berks Counties, supports banning felons who committed certain crimes - extortion, weapons offenses or drug dealing - from the gambling business for life.

"We should go further," Rafferty said, "and prohibit those felons from holding a license."

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