Gaming issues are holding the Pennsylvania state budget hostage. House Majority Leader Dave Reed (R) is saying ‘no deal,’ even as Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R) is remarking that an 
agreement is “more or less” in place. The latest wrinkle in the debate is a proposal to metastasize the state’s casino industry by adding 10 mini-casinos (the industry’s view on this is unknown but unlikely to be favorable). Lawmakers have until next Monday to broker a deal, one that hopefully works off a cumulative budget deficit of $2 billion. The Associated Press reports that “the state government is facing the potential for another downgrade to a credit rating already damaged by its failure to deal with an entrenched post-recession deficit.”
The mini-casino idea is a counterproposal flung on the table after it became clear that the state Senate wasn’t going to go for slot routes. As a sop to the 12 existing operators, they would have first dibs on the licenses for the 
mini-casinos. (A disappointing fiscal year at the slots make one wonder how much more this udder can be tugged.) Airport-lounge gambling remains viable as does Internet gaming, especially since the state lottery would be able to participate in the latter. Not every lawmaker is tractable to gambling expansion but the logical alternative is tax increases, including ones on the state’s natural gas industry. Said state Rep. Stephen Bloom (R), “I hate it. I just hate it less than taxes.” We’ll take that as an “Aye.”
“The decline wasn’t that much,” State Gaming Control Board spokesman Richard McGarvey said of the slot shortfall. “I mean we’re looking at about, out of almost $2.3 billion, about a $50 million difference to last year.” Even so, who expected inelasticity out of Pennsylvania so soon?
* For all the positive economic indicators coming out of Las Vegas lately, there’s been an exception: tourist weddings. Those Elvis impersonators who tie the knot are seeing a downturn in business. The number of licenses issued has more than halved since 2000. Millennials consider themselves “not financially prepared,” while Generation X still hasn’t found what it’s looking for. Bloomberg puts the marriage crisis in macro terms: “Marriage has become a clear dividing line in a stratified country. Its decline is most pronounced among those who didn’t go beyond high school, as better educated people tend to marry each other. America’s working and middle classes are faring badly” — and likely to do worse — “and the research points to unraveling families as one cause.”
Still, it’s not an entirely bleak picture. As was predicted before it was legal, gay marriage has provided Nevada with a cushion to soften the fall.
* Resorts World Manila, trying to put a recent shooting tragedy behind it, is rushing a new, expanded gambling floor toward completion, hoping to have it on line by year’s end. The area of the casino where most of the fatalities occurred (due to smoke inhalation) will be converted to retail. The governmental shutdown of the casino had a concomitant effect on the resort’s Travellers hotel, which saw occupancy plunge from 90% to 40%. Said Travellers CEO Kingson Sian, “We obviously have to gain back the trust of our guests and the public. We’re spending a lot of time enhancing the overall security of the place and learning about what had happened.”
* The fate of the Crown 18 — now 19 — has been sealed and it all happened within the cone of silence that is Chinese jurisprudence. Ironically, it comes as the VIP players they sought are returning to Macao in above-avereage numbers.
* Lawrence Ho‘s Tigre de Cristal is a runaway hit with VIP players, its growth in high-end play 160% over the first half of this year. The good news just keeps on coming: A new highway can get gamblers to 
the casino in 15 minutes and a competing NagaCorp casino won’t be finished until 2019. It could get better. Union Gaming Group‘s Grant Govertsen says, “Management is separately lobbying the government to implement banking-related changes that will allow them to exchange foreign currencies at the cage, replacing the current expensive and cumbersome process for foreign mass market visitors.” Mass-market customers are proving more elusive, as they hew to the illegal casinos that dot Vladivostok. Ho’s going to have to persuade authorities to crack down on the black market if he wants his mass numbers to improve.
