No dice, no way
-- Leonard Cohen, "The Stranger Song"
Robb Pitts, during his years as president of the Atlanta City Council, was perpetually sparring with then-Mayor Bill Campbell. The spats had more to do with turf than principles. But there was one issue on which the two men agreed -- not that anyone noticed.
Both Pitts and Campbell, you see, are big enthusiasts for gambling, or "gaming" as the industry flacks like to spin it.
With the former mayor, the passion was pathological. Campbell was clearly much more obsessed by craps and roulette than he was with running a city. And he was enabled by, um, supporters who palmed wallets full of cash to mayoral flunkies during thinly-disguised-as-public-business gambling junkets.
Pitts' affinity is markedly different, and more honorable. Last week, an urbane, tailored and very relaxed Pitts was eating a granola bar in the 20th floor wood-and-English-prints business office near Lenox Square. He's now a Fulton County commissioner -- a renegade and pariah on the board.
Casino gambling "is the solution," says Pitts, thrusting and swishing the granola like a conductor's baton.
Ah, how many gamblers have had that thought? Just one card, one hand, one roll of the dice, one lottery ticket -- and everything will be fixed. What Pitts is touting isn't a personal solution, however. It's a civic remedy, a statewide fix.
Pitts' affection isn't rooted in Campbell-esque addiction. Although he smiles and nods when asked if likes to toss the bones or pull the bandits' arms, his warmth for gambling is fueled by a less personal fire.
Casinos, Pitts asserts, can solve Georgia's many economic woes. "Could this be the answer to Atlanta's sewer crisis?" Pitts muses rhetorically, and answers, "Absolutely."
He adds that the state's HOPE scholarship fund -- whose lottery funding is being outstripped by the booming number of eligible students -- "could find the answer to its shortfalls" with Georgians bellying up to the casino tables.
All it would take is a series of political events so unlikely in Georgia that even Las Vegas handicapper Jimmy the Greek couldn't calculate the astronomical odds. First, Pitts must find legislators to introduce a constitutional amendment to allow casinos. Then, two-thirds of the House and Senate must approve the amendment, followed by a state referendum in which a majority of Georgians must say, hit me, dealer.
The idea is to limit casinos to counties with 800,000 or more population -- which means Fulton. Pitts is floating the idea of turning Underground Atlanta into one casino, and landing another one somewhere else, maybe down by the airport. Unfortunately, Underground isn't likely to make it -- it doesn't have the space or parking the mega-casinos crave. It's the "somewhere else" that intrigues me, because I'd bet the folks from Vegas already know the real estate they want in the Big Peach. Pitts acknowledges conversations with Hilton (which bought the very stinky Bally outfit a few years ago) and Harrah's. The casino industry can be very generous in funding gambling ballot drives -- the last one in Florida outspent the gubernatorial races.
I don't doubt Pitts' sincerity. If there was ever a time when casinos -- with their promise of painless tax revenues -- seem appealing, it's now.
Pitts has a little history with floating the gambling idea, so he knows the uphill climb to legalize casinos. More than two decades ago, he proposed horse tracks with their pari-mutuel wagering. That didn't go far, but he says, "Gambling is still right for this state."
His most compelling argument has to do with developing Atlanta's convention business. "Hey, you come here, spend a day at Stone Mountain, and there's nothing else to do," Pitts observes. "If there was a casino, people would stay that extra day."
He adds an element of alarm -- what if Florida should allow casinos (voters there have thrice trounced pro-casino referenda)? Who would schedule conventions in Atlanta besides the Baptists?
With the state and local governments skimming as much as $200 million from wagers at the Atlanta casinos, critical local needs could be easily paid for, Pitts allows. Thousands of new jobs would be created.
It's all so damn easy.
So far, no legislator has signed on. In fact, no one in city or state government has jumped aboard Pitts' casino bandwagon, but he is undeterred. With the look of a poker player who knows the next card in the deck will make his inside straight, Pitts says, "It can happen."
It can, and it has in other states, so we should think about this idea.
I have this dilemma with the concept of legalized casino gambling. The libertarian in me says, "Ah, go ahead and let people do what they want. The evil state shouldn't be our baby sitter."
I'd be a hypocrite not to admit that I'm no stranger to wagering. I paid for much of an opulent college lifestyle by poker, relieving other students of their obligation to spend their parents' cash. While doing a story in Palm Beach on backgammon grand master Prince Alexis Obolensky, I picked up enough pointers from, as his friends call him, "Obie" to help me establish a good second income at a now-defunct Atlanta bar called Gammons. I've played blackjack on cruise ships, and roulette, craps and baccarat at casinos in Europe and the Bahamas.
It was all fun, but I don't miss it when I don't gamble. I don't even think about it. For many people, things aren't so easy. In parts of the United States without legalized gambling, fewer than 1 percent of the population are pathological gamblers. Once the casinos hit town, the odds start escalating that your neighbor will be a junkie bettor. In Iowa, for example, the number of problem players went from 1.7 percent of the public in 1989 to 5.4 percent in 1995.
OK, so there are gambling addicts. Many people are alcoholics, but the state still allows liquor sales. Hey, gambling is just innocent fun. You might get rich. And, if you believe Pitts, casinos could be a big boon for our sagging government budgets.
I don't think so, and here's my argument -- libertarian, if you will -- against casinos. Individual freedoms -- including the freedom to indulge in vice -- are part of the pursuit of happiness. But if those vices -- especially if they're state-sponsored and regulated -- cost more than any benefits they bring, I won't bet. Put another way, the casino bosses have no right to expect citizens to ante millions of dollars and allow our city to be degraded so that they can run games in which the house always wins.
The first of the big-time legal casinos in America was the Flamingo, which opened in 1946 in Las Vegas. It was owned by Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the famed mobster. Ever since, the push for legalized gambling has been accompanied by corruption and crime. It's as dead certain as the fact that in the long run the slot machine always wins. The last time Florida had a referendum on casinos, the speaker of the state House was caught taking a $250,000 "consulting fee" from the Hilton-Bally high rollers. Louisiana's ex-governor, Edwin Edwards, got collared for shaking down casino operators. Etcetera, etcetera.
And do we think Georgia and Atlanta pols would be ever-so pure, turning down the illicit favors of the casino operators? Oh, please, I can't stop laughing.
Moreover, the crime associated with casinos oozes out of government offices into the community. Pitts says, "I defy anyone to show me one bad element casinos will bring that isn't already here." He's got a point. The bad guys are already here. Casinos will merely ensure there will be a lot more of them. Some examples:
In the metro area around New Jersey's Atlantic City (do we really want to be like that gawd-awful place?), crime soared 107 percent in the nine years after casinos opened their doors. Mississippi's Gulf Coast saw a 43 percent hike in crime between 1993 and 1996; in the counties where most casinos are located, the jump was as high as 58 percent.
And, U.S. News & World Report did an analysis that showed crime rates in casino communities are 84 percent above the national average.
It ain't a pretty picture and it gets worse.
Take bankruptcies. SMR Research of New Jersey in 1996 found that the 298 U.S. counties with legalized gambling had a bankruptcy filing rate 18 percent higher than no-casino counties. The bankruptcy rate was 35 percent higher than the average in counties with five or more gambling establishments. No surprise there.
But the most compelling arguments are financial. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson has written that gambling "involves simply sterile transfer of money or goods between individuals, creating no new money or goods. Although it creates no output, gambling does nevertheless absorb time and resources. When pursued beyond the limits of recreation, where the main purpose after all is to 'kill' time, gambling subtracts from the national income."
When Wisconsin studied gambling, it found that the state had a $320 million annual deficit after social costs were deducted from the taxes on casinos. That deficit is fueled by the increase in pathological gamblers -- each of whom costs society $13,200 to $52,000 per year, according to a Maryland Department of Health study.
Businesses near casinos lose due to increases in absenteeism and decreases in productivity -- one study published in the Drake Law Review pegged the annual cost at $500,000 for a company with 1,000 employees. And there's no way to measure the sorrow and despair of broken homes and broken people.
So, I don't like gummint making decisions for me. But with all due respect for Commissioner Pitts, I hope he tosses snake eyes when he makes his pitch to legislators.
Senior Editor John Sugg -- who absolutely denies that he plays poker with his kids for their allowance money -- can be reached at 404-614-1241 or at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com. And, oh, in case that urge to gamble is getting a little too intense: www.gamblersanonymous.org.
