March 9, 2007
Gambling Action Alert
Lottery Bill (HB 1494) and Gambling Expansion Moving Forward
The Governor gave his budget address this week and included the sale of the Lottery for pension funds and higher taxes on casinos. The casino lobby won't go along with a tax increase unless they get additional gambling positions. Senate President Emil Jones wants additional casinos, and racetracks want slot machines. When gambling expands we all lose! Read the editorial below and call your state Legislators today.
For Immediate Action
- Call your State Representative and State Senator (217-782-2000) and tell him/her that you are opposed to the expansion of gambling. Ask them to vote NO on all bills to expand gambling.
- Call the Governor (800-642-3112) or e-mail www.illinois.gov/gov/contactthegovernor.cfm and tell him you are opposed to all gambling expansion proposals. Gambling is an unstable source of revenue that hurts people and does not solve budget problems. When gambling expands, we all lose.
- Share this Alert with your church, synagogue, or mosque.
- Forward to 8 others.
http://www.stltoday.com
Little upside in taxing losers
In 2005 alone, state and local governments in Illinois raked in about $750 million in taxes on gambling, about 85 percent of which went to the state. The revenue helps politicians pay for schools, roads, street sweepers and fire trucks -- without raising income taxes or property taxes -- and still leaves millions for the owners of riverboat casinos.
The gamblers don't fare so well, of course. Losers -- and most gamblers lose -- keep coming back and keep losing.
Now pressure is building in Illinois to encourage even more gambling. House Republicans are backing a $5 billion plan to build new roads and schools and fund mass transit. They would pay for the projects by upping casino revenue, mainly by letting them add slot machines.
In addition, a House committee last month passed a bill that would add four new casinos around Chicago and, for the first time, permit slot machines at horse racing tracks, including Fairmount Park. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, says its provisions would raise $2 billion to $3 billion to add to Illinois's annual state spending of about $50 billion.
This is a fool's bargain when you count the social costs of gambling. Experts estimate that from 1.5 percent to 5.1 percent of Americans may become problem gamblers, becoming psychologically hooked, losing more than they and their families can afford and coming back to lose more. A quarter to a third of problem gamblers lose their jobs, and nearly 20 percent declare bankruptcy, according to various studies.
And it's a difficult addiction to kick. Gamblers Anonymous figures only about 8 percent of its members manage to stop for as long as a year.
Even the supposed economic benefits of gambling don't stand up to scrutiny. Recreational gamblers, which represent the vast majority of players, gamble with recreational money -- money they would be spending anyway in movies, restaurants and shops. So the casino's gain is the neighborhood restaurant's loss. Jobs and profits shift from surrounding businesses into the casinos.
These days, gambling is cannibalizing itself. The Fairmount Park race track, for example, has seen its attendance drop by two-thirds since casinos arrived in 1991. That has eaten into track employment and the Illinois horse-breeding industry. And the industry's answer is to put slot machines at the race tracks?
Given the state's dependence on gambling revenue -- as well as the 8,500 people employed at Illinois' gambling boats -- there's no going back. But it makes little sense for the state to expand an industry whose economic benefits are dubious at best and whose social costs are appalling.