Table games in Pa. are all but assured

By Suzette Parmley

Inquirer Staff Writer

HARRISBURG - The last piece of the budget that Gov. Rendell finally signed Friday night has not quite clicked into place.

But everyone in the middle of the 101-day budget marathon considers this final item a fait accompli. Legislators expect to get it done this week. The budget won't balance without it.

In fact, the people with the most to gain are so confident of its passage that they have already cleared thousands of square feet of space on the floors of their casinos.

Thanks to the budget crisis, legalized gambling in Pennsylvania is about to expand dramatically.

"It's not a matter of if," Brett Marcy, spokesman for House Majority Leader Todd Eachus (D., Luzerne), said Friday. "It's a matter of how."

Casino operators hope to have poker, roulette, and other table games running by spring. New "resort casinos" are gearing up to install hundreds of slot machines and gaming tables at sites in Valley Forge and elsewhere.

On the plus side: Table games promise thousands of jobs as dealers, croupiers, and other casino workers in regions all too accustomed to layoffs and plant closings. The resort casinos hope to draw tourism. Pennsylvania bettors will be able to be here instead of West Virginia, Delaware, or Atlantic City.

"Now, I won't have to drive 70 miles to play poker," said Don Maurer, 75, a retiree from Philadelphia's Overbrook section, who plays four times a week at the Trump Taj Mahal and the Borgata.

On the minus side: Anti-casino forces foresee more gambling addiction and other social ills, and point to legislative language that would let customers cash checks and get lines of credit at casinos.

And one expert questions the wisdom of states' balancing their budgets with projected gaming revenue - $200 million in Pennsylvania's case - at a time when some existing casinos are struggling. Lucy Dadayan, who studies the economy's impact on state and municipal funding, at the State University of New York, says, "The gambling windfalls may be short-lived."

But even Rendell, who has often warned against rushing too quickly to add more games, said the budget impasse changed his mind.

"I think that table games is slightly premature for Pennsylvania," he said Friday after signing the main budget bills. "But given the financial exigencies, and given the reluctance of the legislature to do any broad-base tax, table games were almost a necessity here."

Rendell relents

For months, Rendell had said the state should get all its slot casinos up and running before adding table games. In June, he began amending that.

During the grand opening June 9 of the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, a reporter pressed him about the possibility of the state adding table games. Rendell replied with a huge grin: "Maybe."

By midsummer, legislators were holding hearings on table-game proposals. State Rep. Paul Clymer (R., Bucks) noticed the presence of an army of well-tailored visitors. "Fifth Avenue people," he called them - lobbyists for the casino operators.

"They were very polished and distinguished," Clymer, a longtime foe of expanded gaming, recalled yesterday. "They had on nice suits. You could tell they were lobbyists."

Since Pennsylvania opened its first slots parlor three years ago, its casino operators have made no bones about wanting to be more like Atlantic City and Las Vegas, where the clang of slot machines is accompanied by the shuffling of decks and the rattle of dice.

Those operators worked hard and spent hard over the years to convince Harrisburg of their positions. Between 2001 and 2008, investors in Pennsylvania's 14 licensed gaming facilities gave $4.4 million to political campaigns in the state, according to a study by the self-styled watchdog group Common Cause. Millions more came from lawyers and lobbyists representing those interests, the study found. (Campaign reports for any donations made during the 101-day budget stalemate aren't available yet.)

Now, their latest wish is about to come true. "There is a recognition amongst all parties that table games are coming to Pennsylvania," Marcy, Eachus' spokesman, said Friday after a table-games bill passed the Senate 29-20.

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