Top cops disagree on video poker

Pennsylvania's top prosecutor said yesterday he thinks legalizing video poker is a bad idea. The state's top cop is all for it.

Attorney General Tom Corbett told the House Appropriations Committee that Gov. Rendell's proposal to make video poker legal in bars and clubs, may seem like an easy way to generate revenue but it's "the wrong way."

Corbett, responding to a lawmaker's question during a state budget hearing, said some may argue the state already has casino gambling, so what's the problem with video poker? But he said, it's "morally complicated."

"It's a difficult issue," said Corbett, who investigated illegal video poker operations 20 years ago as U.S. Attorney for the Western District in Pittsburgh. "It's a slippery slope. At some point that slippery slope has got to stop."

Sitting before the same committee earlier yesterday, Pennsylvania State Police Commander Frank Pawlowski reiiterated his position that video poker is a thriving underground industry.

"It’s all operating under the shadows,” Pawlowski was reported as saying in the online news service Capitolwire. He called the issue “particularly frustrating.”

Pennsylvania State Police officials estimate there are roughly 17,000 video-poker machines now operating illegally, and stress that they would rather use their time to crack down on drugs and sex offenders than track illegal video-poker machines.

Rendell wants to use the tax revenue from video poker machines - which he says could top $500 million a year- to help as many 170,000 students attend college.

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Posted by Amy Worden @ 2:00 PM Permalink | 3 comments

Comments

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 12:20 PM, 02/21/2009

Tax the machines,tax pot,tax sports betting.Working Americans indulge in vice.Smokers & drinkers are the biggest taxpaying group in Society.History is full of vice taxes.Whiskey Rebellion was the 1st place Geo Wash went after his financing of the American Revolutionary war.Geo didnt want to get stiffed out of his $$,so he went after vice,has been the source of Govt Revenue

— jet3to

Comment removed.

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 8:03 AM, 02/22/2009

Some good info: http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/02/12/governor-ed-rendell-video-poker

— NotADoneDeal

3 comments

About Commonwealth Confidential team

Commonwealth Confidential gives you regularly updated coverage of the state legislature, the governor and the workings of the state bureaucracy. It is written by correspondents in the Inquirer's Harrisburg bureau, based right in the statehouse, and by the newspaper's far-flung campaign reporters.

Angela Couloumbis (left) joined The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1998, and has covered government and politics in New Jersey, Philadelphia and throughout Pennsylvania, including Gov. Rendell’s 2006 race against former Pittsburgh Steeler Lynn Swann.

Amy Worden (right) joined the Inquirer in 2000 and has covered governors, gubernatorial races, U.S. Senate races and three presidential campaigns. When not covering politics she can be found filing dispatches from disaster scenes or digging into local stories of national import.