A message from The Alabama Policy Institute
The House gambling bills quickly swept through the process in that chamber but ran into a buzzsaw in the Senate. A 1.49 million percent increase in access was too much to consider; the ability of an unaccountable gaming commission to transfer locations and/or operators was untenable; the timing of the statewide vote and those faithful souls who believe that Alabama should resist balancing state budgets on the backs of the poor were among those who refused to vote for the House passed bills.
Those concerns all came to bear in a chaotic committee meeting last week in the Senate. A Tourism committee meeting was called but had no agenda. After almost a half hour of waiting for the committee chairman and a quorum, several Senators proposed leaving for other meetings. Others questioned if there was a duly called public hearing (there wasn’t).
Finally, a public hearing was allowed on the House bills and there were some interesting bedfellows. There were no proponents of the bills present. In addition to ALFA, API, ALCAP, a well-spoken concerned mom of six from Cullman, and Vestavia Hills City Councilwoman Kimberly Cook, former Governor and promoter of the failed lottery campaign of 1999, Don Siegelman, testified against the bill.
This week, a similar morass in the Tourism committee occurred. The meeting was hastily set for 2:00pm but quickly gaveled out at the call of the chair. After members met in the hallway outside the committee room, the committee finally officially met at 5:15 and promptly substituted the bills with something virtually no one in room had seen (much less read). After a motion from Greg Albritton and a second by Andrew Jones, the committee voice voted the subs out. This is not the way a transparent governmental process works.
Last week, Former Governor Siegelman stated that he thought legislators and their immediate families should be barred from serving on any proposed commission with the implication that, otherwise, the process could be corrupted. The level of corruption written into the House bills has been a matter of much discussion amongst the Senate and they struck the ability for legislators to serve but not their families. However, there is still nothing in the gambling bills to prohibit elected officials from receiving “complimentary services meals, rooms, gifts, cash, coins, tokens, or other items” at the casinos they are contemplating legalizing. Some Alabamians may want a lottery, or even casinos or sports betting, but zero Alabamians want more government corruption.
Former Governor Siegelman also asserted that, “this bill turns it back on children and working adults in Alabama.” He’s right and the subs don’t fix that. Casinos aren’t limited to locations away from child-centric locations such as schools or daycares. Minors are allowed to work in casinos, and since the entire goal of the legislation is to maximize profits there is also no provision against gambling advertising at school events or sporting events where minors are present or participating.
Another consideration regarding the most vulnerable is the impact of the legalization and expansion of casinos on human trafficking in the state. The statistics are clear, and it is a well-understood fact that human trafficking increases in and around casinos. An open letter from many of the state’s leaders fighting human trafficking has made a strong impression and called into question just how many casinos (if any) should be formally legalized in the state. The American Bar Association and the US Department of Justice have also opined that casinos and casinos with hotels are hotspots for human trafficking. Even the American Gaming Association admits that gaming operations are routinely used to facilitate human trafficking.
API estimated that the House bills would increase the number of problem gamblers in Alabama by 37%. One in five problem gamblers attempt suicide: that’s 41,583 additional suicide attempts in Alabama due to the proposed expansion of gambling. Only .001% of gambling revenue is specifically designated to combat problem gambling in the proposal and that is only if there are unclaimed lottery prizes.
There weren’t enough votes to pass the House bills in the Senate, but instead of voting the House proposal down, Plan B was developed to focus on a paper lottery and the grandfathering in of current illegal operators (plus a few others for good measure). Better than the House bills? Absolutely. A good solution? Absolutely not. Rewarding illegal operators could never be the right decision and the Constitutional Amendment is flawed. The Plan B bills that passed the questionable Senate committee Tuesday require a Constitutional Amendment and compact with the Poarch Creek Indians (PCI) that leaves the door open for PCI to gain a casino at the beach (OWA would be first on the list as it is already owned by PCI), in Birmingham, in Huntsville, or anywhere the tribe can successfully convince the liberal Department of Interior that it would benefit them. How many times has the Department of Interior turned a tribe down nationwide? Just once that we can find – that was in California and was only because it was a protected wetland. In short, when a compact is signed, PCI won’t need a vote of the people or any local input to have an operational monopoly over gambling in the state.
Some members of the Senate may have had good intentions to pare down the corrupt House bills that expanded gambling by millions of percentage points statewide, but they didn’t go far enough to protect the vulnerable or remove the corruption. The only thing that the Tourism committee and those negotiating these bills behind closed doors seem to have agreed upon so far is to have a paper lottery that doesn’t fund education, unlimited casino locations for PCI, and that crime really does pay in the State of Alabama.
This is a paid advertisement from The Alabama Policy Institute