Illinois’ suicide pact; Donald Trump, freeloader

Whether you spent Memorial Day grilling some bratwurst or, like me, crawling around with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a cleaning cloth, we did no harm. That can’t be said for the Illinois House of Representatives, which opened a can of whup-ass on the state’s casino industry yesterday.

In a 65-50 vote, lawmakers legalized …

• five new casinos (including a set-aside for Chicago)

• slot parlors at Midway and O’Hare airports, and the Illinois State Fairgrounds

• an unspecified number of racinos

The state Senate is expected to approve this, as is Gov. Pat Quinn (D, left). True, existing casinos will be thrown a bone or two. They can purchase as many as 800 new gaming positions and there’s vague talk of relaxing the state’s vertigo-inducing tax rate. This is all very good news for International Game Technology, Bally Technologies and WMS Industries, all of whom stand to sell as many as 10,000-plus new machines (an earlier attempt to sprinkle Illinois with slot routes having flopped).

But it’s a one-finger salute to the state’s existing casinos, just barely hanging in there as it is. If Rep. Lou Lang (D) really wants to “stop exporting business” to Missouri, Iowa and Illinois, lifting the state’s smoking ban would be a good start and tax relief wouldn’t hurt, either. The top rate in Illinois is sufficiently usurious that casinos actually try to stay under it by incentivizing players to gamble at sister properties, mostly in Indiana.

Impervious to irony, lead sponsor Lang actually tried to sell this “fuck you” as economic stimulus. “It does not matter if it’s the gaming industry or the burger industry. We have to keep business in Illinois.” (Lang sounds downright delusional when he predicts $500 milllion-$1 billion in new gambling revenue annually.*) His bill could have the opposite effect. How many kicks in the pants are operators expected to absorb — Penn National Gaming is especially vulnerable — before they decide the cost of doing business in Illinois is prohibitive? This is one of the most anti-business pieces of legislation that’s ever crossed the S&G desk.

* — adversary Rep. Jack Franks (D) is equally out to lunch when he asserts Nevada will be “jealous” of the bill. Mr. Franks, with all due respect, you don’t know jack.

For that matter, the Land of Lincoln’s casinos are in such parlous financial condition, where’s the financial incentive to build five new ones? The racino provision is all about propping up the state’s parimutuels, everyone else be damned. That Chicago pleasure palace will get built; it’s been in the cards for ages. But how much appetite exists for putting $100 million or more into, say, a Danville casino, to say nothing of the hundreds of millions of dollars Lang demands upfront as the price of admission? But he and his allies are in for “sticker shock” when the money starts coming and it’s closer to a trickle than a flood.

Only $8.6 million? That’s the taxable value of white elephant Trump International, a 95% reduction pushed through in a 2010 “juice job,” reports the Los Angeles Times. That’s just the latest in a litany of Donald Trump tax cheats and government subsidy-mooching … with the connivance of many an elected official, it should be noted.