Expect a deluge of dollars to be spent opposing or supporting a casino-repeal ballot question in Massachusetts. Unlike political campaigns, ballot questions have no spending limitation attached to them. So far, the biggest amount spent on a ballot question in the Bay State is $13 billion, but the recent, $90 million brawl over Prince George’s County, in Maryland, shows how the dollars can mount up when gaming’s at stake. At least one voter is persuaded. “We need jobs and money for education,” she told a reporter. “I don’t think the sky will fall if we have a few casinos.”
* It hasn’t escaped Steve Wynn‘s notice that the Massachusetts Gaming Commission chose Penn National Gaming‘s Plainville racino project in part because it will help prop up horse racing … to the point where one wondered if the odds were stacked against Wynn Boston. As a countermeasure, he’s offering hiring preference to employees of Suffolk Downs, which has threatened to huff and puff and go out of business if it doesn’t get a casino — or else. This doesn’t suddenly give Wynn the edge but it’s a canny chess move.
Only Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh could see in the repeal campaign a chance to further shake down Wynn and Mohegan Sun alike.
* Bally Technologies CEO Richard Haddrill can add the title “hatchet man” to his resume. Some 270 employees, many of them right here in Las Vegas, were sacrificed on the altar of the company’s takeover of SHFL Entertainment. Since one of the selling points of the Bally/SHFL transaction was a lack of redundancy among its product lines, it’s a bit dismaying to see 6% of the workforce turned out on the streets.
* Internet sweepstakes cafes are becoming a vexing problem for the State 
of California. As in so many other jurisdictions, they operate in a legal gray market. Take Silk & Stars, where players bet $2 a hand on games like “Luck of the Irish” and which the Sacramento County sheriff’s department has raided twice this year (Sacramento is a particular hotbed of activity). It’s the kind of establishment that Assemblyman Rudy Salas (D) is trying to outlaw. His bill has a deep coalition of supporters, although Internet cafes argue it’s a legal market device.
Customers like Khue Vang fail to see the difference. “I’m not coming back. I’d rather go to Thunder Valley,” she said while fleeing the sheriff’s raid. “On the surface it looks like it’s illegal,” insists Philip Walker, who heads the Internet Cafe Association of California. “But once you get down to the meat inside, it really isn’t.” The key distinction, he says, is that winners are predetermined, unlike a randomized slot machine.
California’s courts have been no great help. The Fifth District Court of Appeal frowns upon them because “(a)ll the trappings and experiences involved in playing traditional slot machines…” but the Third District Court of Appeal held, back in 2003, that the predetermination meant the devices weren’t slot machines (i.e., permissible). Salas’ bill would codify the Fifth District’s interpretation as law.
* No keno for Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (R). He’s on his way out of 
office and doesn’t want that to be his legacy. The state lottery plans to add keno to its offerings, but Beebe is supporting a bill to thwart it. “The commission has been under pressure to increase sales, which have been falling and making less money available for college scholarships.” Beebe agrees with the state senate that the move goes beyond what voters conceived when they enacted a lottery, six years ago. “What I thought they voted for was a traditional lottery, period, and I’ve said that for three years or four years now,” said Beebe, who fears there may not be the votes to get it out of committee in the House, in which case keno would probably go ‘live’ this autumn.
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