Pa. legislators question gaming board's expenses

HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board came under fire yesterday from a group of state legislators irate over revelations that it spent thousands of dollars on travel, including a trip to Rome, in the midst of a worsening economy.

"The gaming board is operating like a sovereign nation answering to no one," said Rep. Mike Vereb (R., Montgomery). "They are spending money like a bunch of drunken sailors."

Vereb and 13 other representatives and senators held a Capitol news conference to assail the board on several fronts and called for the resignation of its chairwoman, Mary DiGiacomo Colins.

A board spokesman said the travel had been appropriate and stressed that the money had come from casino profits and not taxpayers. He also said Colins had no plans to step down.

The accusations came a week after WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh reported that gaming regulators and other state officials had taken pricey trips despite a ban on out-of-state travel. Included was a trip that four gaming board members and another board official took to Rome for an international casino conference in September, three days after Gov. Rendell's ban on out-of-state travel.

Rome hotel rooms reached $400 a night, and invoices included bar bills for drinks ordered poolside. The trip's tab was about $26,000.

Chuck Ardo, Rendell's spokesman, said yesterday that gaming officials had asked the administration for guidance about whether to cancel the trip in light of the travel ban. Because the nontransferable and nonrefundable trip had already been paid for, the administration recommended not to cancel.

In a statement, Rendell said he stood by Colins, and didn't believe the travel issue tarnished the board's fiscal reputation.

Another target of the legislators was a Las Vegas trip that David Kwait, former director of the board's Bureau of Investigation, took despite having announced his intent to retire. A law firm in Bethesda, Md., that represents gaming interests later hired him.

Vereb and other legislators yesterday called on Kwait or the law firm, Ruben & Aronson L.L.P., to repay the gaming board for the trip.

Kwait could not be reached for comment.

Louis M. Aronson, a cofounder of the firm, said yesterday that discussions with Kwait about becoming its director of investigations and regulatory compliance had not begun until after Kwait left the gaming board.

Aronson said he was unaware of the request for reimbursement and would not comment on it until his firm received one.

Sen. Jane Clare Orie (R., Allegheny) said the overall travel costs showed "incompetence and arrogance" by the gaming board, which oversees the state's seven slots casinos and two that are planned.

"These guys are living high off the hog," she added.

In defending the trips, Doug Harbach, the board's spokesman, said travel was paid for out of the casinos' profits, not state revenue.

He also said Colins "is not going to resign, and the proof of her success is in the numbers we are doing. He pointed out that despite a worsening economy, casinos generated an average of $2.8 million a day in state revenue.

Nonetheless, the legislators announced that they were drafting bills to require, among other things, that all out-of-state travel by state workers be posted online and that the state auditor general perform an annual audit of the gaming board to ferret out any waste.