Home >  Local News

Friday, July 25, 2003

By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

It's not often that Methodists, Mormons, Muslims, Presbyterians and Lutherans team up, but they were united yesterday in denouncing problems they see coming from Gov. Ed Rendell's plans for expanding gambling in Pennsylvania.

	Anti-gambling adovacates, from left, Adeli Ferganny, Nancy Cochran, and Martin Galbraith, listen to Evain Stoffard, president of No Dice, as he speaks out against the legalization of slot machines in Pennsylvania. No Dice is a Pittsburgh-based grassroots anti-gambling group. (John Heller, Associated Press) Click photo for larger image.

Led by officials from No Dice, an 8-year-old anti-gambling citizens group, speakers from a wide variety of religious faiths and community groups contended that legalizing slot machines at 11 venues around the state will wreck family budgets, increase divorce and spousal abuse, induce white-collar crime such as theft and embezzlement, and have other harmful social effects.

Speakers at a news conference at First Presbyterian Church, Downtown, said expanding gambling is not the proper way to lower property taxes or increase school funding.

"As Christians, we care passionately about the education of our children," said Nancy Cochran, moderator of the Pittsburgh Presbytery, which oversees 157 churches in the region. "But gambling isn't the answer to education or other community development needs."

"Our opposition is based on a concern for the needs of the poor and vulnerable. The attraction of gambling is especially dangerous for them," said Pastor Martin Galbraith of the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry. "Government revenues shouldn't come from programs that encourage people to spend money they can't afford to lose."

Joining in the opposition to state-sanctioned slot machines were the League of Women Voters, the Islamic Center, representing the five Pittsburgh-area mosques, the Methodist Conference of Western Pennsylvania, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and several individuals, including businessman Ron Morris. Morris, a self-described former gambling addict, said that 20 years ago he wrecked a business he had founded by embezzling its money and losing it all gambling.

Cochran said pastors will be encouraged to preach sermons against gambling and church members will be urged to contact their state legislators and Rendell's office to express their opposition to the current bill passed by the House.

It calls for nine racetracks with slot machines in the state, plus two non-racetrack slots locations, one in Philadelphia and another somewhere in the seven-county Pittsburgh region.

The House passed the bill early Saturday, and will send it to the Senate, where a bill calling for eight slots casinos, all at racetracks, was approved in late June. It isn't known yet when the Senate will consider the House bill, but a number of senators of both parties have sharply criticized the House's version this week.

Rendell is trying to broker a compromise between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

Rendell and House Speaker John Perzel, R-Philadelphia, have said the state could realize up to $1 billion a year in revenue from taxing slots operations at 11 locations. They would use that money to lower school property taxes around the state.

No Dice President Evan Stoddard, a Duquesne University official, said that bettors would have to lose at least $2 billion a year for the state to get that much tax revenue, while casino and track owners were also getting their shares.

"What this is all about is greed and special interests," he said. "This is really about corporate greed. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail" and the bill will be defeated in Harrisburg, he said.