{"id":18746,"date":"2016-08-23T14:00:46","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T22:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=18746"},"modified":"2016-08-25T08:43:55","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T16:43:55","slug":"tax-fight-in-pennsylvania-adelson-donation-goes-awry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/tax-fight-in-pennsylvania-adelson-donation-goes-awry\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax fight in Pennsylvania; Adelson donation goes awry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sands Bethlehem<\/strong> could soon pocket another $10 million a year but it’s letting Mount Airy Casino<\/strong> do the heavy lifting. The latter is arguing to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court<\/strong> that the flat, yearly fee falls disproportionately on small casinos<\/a>, not the big boys \"Sandslike Sands, or as the state constitution puts it, “all taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects.” On the other side of the issue are elected officials like Bethlehem<\/strong> Mayor Robert Donchez<\/strong>, who says $10 million a year translates into 100 police officers and the “host fee is significantly important to our budget.” Added state Sen. Pat Browne<\/strong>, anticipating a court defeat,\u00a0“I don’t know exactly how we’d go about it, but given that this fee has been established for a decade, we’re not just going to let this money be stripped from municipalities that rely on it.” However, given the Legislature’s hopeless performance on gaming-related issues last session, is it going to be able to get its act together and find a way to prop up civic budgets?<\/p>\n

Mount Airy<\/strong> has a case: SugarHouse<\/strong> in Philadelphia<\/strong> is exempted from the levy (it pays a simple 4% of gross receipts), as are the state’s two resort casinos. Also, as a percentage of slot revenue the tax falls more heavily on Mount Airy (7%) than on, say, Parx Casino<\/strong> (3%). Mount Airy wants an across-the-board, 2% impost, which would also end “true-up” payments that casinos have to make at end of each year to reach the $10 million threshold. (The biggest “true-up” casualty: little Presque Isle Downs<\/strong> racino, which has paid $62 million over its lifetime.) Sands says it doesn’t need the tax relief.\u00a0“We knew exactly what we were getting into when we applied for the license,” said casino CEO Mark Juliano<\/strong>.\u00a0“We’re not trying to get out of it. We don’t intend to join in the suit.” That’s a surprisingly generous (and civic-spirited) frame of mind.<\/p>\n

* Juliano’s boss, Sheldon Adelson<\/strong>, has been making some non-gaming headlines. He’s been spending some of his wealth on efforts to rehabilitate Israel<\/strong>‘s image among American millennials, who are increasingly siding with Palestine<\/strong>. Says Adelson lieutenant David Brog<\/strong>, which perhaps just a touch of alarmism,\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s the\u00a0No. 1 \"sheladelson1\"nonmilitary threat to Israel and the Jewish people.\u00a0Our goal is to change the younger generation from neutral,\u00a0if not opposed to,\u00a0Israel\u00a0to support of Israel.\u201d Most of the activities are benign, whether it’s hosting “peace tents” (complete with free falafel) at anti-Israel rallies or sending students to the Holy Land to study the issue up close.\u00a0\u201cThe facts on the ground are very different from apartheid and genocide,\u201d said Rabbi Aaron Lerner<\/strong>, adding that he hopes to change the conversation “to one about complexity, nuance and dialogue, which is better suited to a university.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately — and this is what landed Adelson in the newspapers — the David Horowitz Freedom Center<\/strong> went off the reservation<\/a> and back into the Joe McCarthy<\/strong> tactics of the 1950s. Pro-Palestinian UCLA<\/strong> student Robert Gardner<\/strong> was surprised to see himself named as one of 16 “Jew haters” on a poster in Westwood<\/strong>. Subsequently,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve received death threats online, and people have followed me.\u201d UCLA pushed back, accusing the Horowitz Center of\u00a0\u201cguilt by association, of using blacklists, of ethnic slander\u00a0and sensationalized images engineered to trigger racially tinged fear.\u201d On the whole, Adelson’s intentions appear to be laudatory but he’d do well to rein in the Horowitz Center attack dogs, lest they overshadow his good works.<\/p>\n

* There’s been a dramatic reversal in California<\/strong>‘s online-poker debate but it doesn’t bring the issue any closer to resolution. Assemblyman Adam Gray<\/strong> caved to longstanding \"california_state_flag\"pressure and explicitly consigned PokerStars<\/strong> to the penalty box for five years<\/a>. (He also simplified a complex, sliding-scale taxation formula to a flat, 10% rate.) As columnist Steve Ruddock<\/strong> puts it “the amended version of AB 2863<\/strong> doesn\u2019t really add support, it simply flip flops which groups support the bill.” Now the tribes which allied themselves with PokerStars not find themselves outside, looking in, they’ll probably be only too glad to see AB 2863 fail. Indeed, several tribes and card rooms were quick to issue a declaration that\u00a0\u201cAs now drafted, the bill arbitrarily and unfairly bars one operator from competing with the supporters of these amendments in the iPoker indefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

PokerStars spokesman Eric Hollreiser<\/strong> blasted the Gray amendment as “poison pill language,” the product of “backroom deals” that “applies penalties for alleged crimes without any application of due process.” The Poker Players Alliance<\/strong> offered its own legal opinion<\/a>, namely that a purported five-year ban “is actually a lifetime ban,” raising serious constitutional issues. Gray, it appears, has stood the Internet poker debate on its head without producing any momentum.<\/p>\n