The wild bunch

There’s no one more depraved than a politician looking to close a revenue shortfall. So we’ve learned from the drive-by shootings hailing from the amoral outlaw band otherwise known as the Nevada Legislature. As sage political pundit Obi-Wan Kenobi observed, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state Senate Judiciary Committee, in a laughable perversion of its responsibility, voted unanimously to allow Cantor Gaming mobile-gambling devices to be employed throughout on casino property. Dazzled by the (probably exaggerated) promise of $18 million in new tax revenue, lawmakers bent down and grabbed their ankles. After all, nothing says “Vegas” like sitting in a hotel room playing with by yourself.

The aptly named Sen. Valerie Wiener (D) promises “substantial safeguards” and the Nevada Gaming Control Board allowed that there was “a chance” Cantor’s handheld devices wouldn’t find their way into Young Johnny’s sweaty little palms. Wiener’s campaign-contribution records haven’t been posted on the Nevada Secretary of State‘s Web site but another pusher of this odious bill, Assm. William Horne (D) came cheap. While he was a veritable sponge of casino cash (getting four grand from MGM Resorts International alone), Cantor bought Horne’s soul for a mere $1,000. The Nevada Gaming Commission still has to approve this farce but, to paraphrase the great American filmmaker Sam Peckinpah, they’re good whores who go where they’re kicked.

Horne, meanwhile, is rewarding his financial supporters — who include virtually every major gaming company you could name — by sticking an avaricious mitt into Nevada’s slot machines. If you leave so much as one thin dime uncashed when you stand up from the slots, Horne wants it deemed “unclaimed” property. Being a generous fellow, he wouldn’t pillage the casinos of all that money; he’ll let ’em have 25 cents on the dollar. How very “george” of him.

In its present form, the bill would still require casinos to pay taxes on 100% of that “unclaimed property.” While I’m glad that Horne is attempting to solve the chronic underfunding of gambling regulation in the Silver State, this is a pretty rapacious way of doing so. Perhaps all the other industries that get a free ride off gaming’s back could chip in the estimated $20 million-$50 million instead. But, no, raising taxes in Nevada is “anti-business” … unless you’re in the casino business, that is, in which case you’re everybody’s bitch. Since the Nevada Resort Association has turned into cheese-eating surrender monkeys on this issue, casinos had better prepare to get taxed twice over on your unredeemed slot ticket.

Another innocent bystander gunned down by the Lege is your Joe Average problem gambler. In a previous session, then-Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) raided the state’s problem-gambling fund to underwrite his budget. Now lawmakers are perpetuating Midnight Jim’s cash grab by enacting AB 500, which would slash pathological-gambling monies from $2/slot machine to $1/device for a two-year period, ostensibly sunsetting in 2013. (I’ll believe it when it happens.) The effect will be to leave a Band-Aid solution in place. Or, as Nevada Council on Problem Gaming Director Carol O’Hare (above) told me, “It means that there will be no funding going to prevention programs.” Or training. Or research. Only existing treatment programs will continue to receive state monies. Nevada may be Ground Zero for pathological gambling but damned if our solons will do anything to ameliorate the problem, the gutless bastards.

Rocky Mountain low. Fiscal relief for Colorado‘s casinos came too late. Longer hours, more games, more smoking … none of it was enough to neutralize the Great Recession, which has steadily driven gambling revenues down the slope. Now lawmakers are attempting to mitigate the slide by trimming casino taxes by 5% (to an effective rate of 11.8%, the first such reduction in a dozen years). It’s 50% less than casino operators sought but this is clearly an instance of half a loaf being better than none.