Thursday, February 19, 2004

You can tell when someone is new to a Western Pennsylvania bar. When he goes to play the poker machine, the bartender tells him, "That's for amusement only."

No bar owner is going to pay off a stranger who gets lucky at video poker. That's illegal. (Nudge, nudge; wink, wink.) But regulars get paid because the tavern owner wants them to come back. Many a neighborhood bar would go under were it not for regulars losing regularly at these machines.

A bill in the state Legislature is designed to end that charade by legalizing the machines, though the odds of that passing are long. Even the bill's sponsor, Rep. Paul Costa, D-Wilkins, isn't betting on it.

But then talking about legalizing gambling is as much a Pennsylvania pastime as gambling itself. The ratio of jabber about betting to legal bets is higher than the odds of winning Powerball. We haven't even allowed slot machines at the racetracks because whenever lawmakers gather, some want to go all the way, with casinos and such, and that's too much for conservatives to swallow. So nothing changes.

Costa says his bill would be a way to go beyond "making a very few people very, very rich."

Let the 18,000 liquor establishments each have up to three gambling machines, and everyone could have a fair shot at the suckers. I mean the gaming patrons. Strapped city and borough budgets would get a healthy cut of the take.

The private sector and governments would split the winnings 60-40, with the liquor licensee, the video game vendor and the state each taking 30 percent and the local government taking 10. A computer tie-in to Harrisburg, similar to the Pennsylvania Lottery's, would prevent tampering.

Each local government could also charge up to $1,000 to license each machine, so we're talking huge money. Pittsburgh alone would reap nearly $10 million a year in government revenue (more than enough to knock the parking tax down to last year's levels); $29 million would go to Philadelphia; and the struggling borough of Braddock would net almost $200,000, according to Costa.

To generate that, of course, citizens would have to lose about 10 times that much in each of those places. But it's not as if that isn't already happening.

Ronald Amati, a district justice in Washington County, went to the federal slammer for 28 months beginning in 2001 for running an illegal video poker parlor out of a coffee shop in Finleyville. At his trial, his attorney pointed out that the fees of $250 to $500 then charged by municipalities for poker machine licenses amounted to tacit approval.

"The notion of towns not knowing about poker payoffs is ridiculous," Philip Ignelzi, a former federal prosecutor, said then.

"There is not a more lucrative illegal activity in the western part of Pennsylvania than video poker," Assistant U.S. Attorney James R. Wilson said. "A well-placed poker machine can generate $1,000 a week easily."

So this bill, says Costa, is "just tapping something that already exists, something that already goes on." Tavern owners and video vendors like it because it gets the fear of government off their backs.

In 1990, Gov. Robert Casey vetoed a bill that would have legalized video poker, saying it would lure criminals and would not bring economic prosperity. This state has continued to assume the moral high ground in this way, keeping a straight face even as it operates and promotes a multimillion-dollar numbers game.

Given the choice, I'd prefer the legalization of video poker machines to the opening of casinos. Legalizing what's already happening would not markedly change the culture. Casinos would. Casinos also would drain money that otherwise might go to local restaurants and taverns, places that in turn support scattered local repairmen and distributors of everything from napkins to pop.

But the word I hear is that the only chance this bill has is if it rides on another bill to legalize casinos. If that happens, Pennsylvania will have to really kick up its production of losers, or there just won't be enough bad hands to go around.

Brian O'Neill can be reached at boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947.

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