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by: Gene Koprowski.
States are upping their ante, increasingly seeing new gambling venues as the solution to economic growth concerns.
Proposals to have slots or casinos are growing in at least 14 states, luring legislators and governors.
 
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Experts say the latest round of gambling initiatives are noteworthy in volume and ambition — a sign that the industry aims to capitalize on states' badly bruised economies.

"From the gambling industry's point of view, this is their big chance," said Earl Grinols, an economics professor at Baylor University who specializes in gambling.

Gambling proponents are extolling the economic virtues of gambling: a $54 billion annual business that employs more than 350,000 people, with most state gambling revenues coming from lotteries, racetracks and betting devices such as slot and video poker machines.

When the budgeting alternatives lawmakers must consider include reducing education funding or lifting sales taxes, resistance to gambling as a growth tool is easier to alleviate, political experts are saying.

"Who wouldn't be interested if you're a politician who needs to fund programs?" said Bo Bernhard, director of research at the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — a government-funded program.
Gambling has held up well compared with states' other revenue streams, such as income and sales taxes. This helps explain why past industry growth spurts have been preceded by economic downturns, analysts said.

For example, Rhode Island opened the country's first racetrack casino in 1992, and four states soon followed. States facing with declining tax revenues during the 2001 recession joined multi-state lotteries such as Powerball and gave more freedom to Native American tribes seeking to expand their casinos.



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Ohio's casino backers, including lobbyists working for Penn National Gambling Inc., are pushing a variety of large-scale development projects. In Georgia, a developer working with Dover Downs Inc., wants to transform a deserted section of downtown Atlanta with a 29-story hotel that would attract tourists with more than 5,500 video lottery terminals.
The entrepreneur pitching the $450 million Atlanta project, Dan O'Leary, reckons $300 million a year in revenues would be funneled to the state, helping to pay for a popular lottery-funded scholarship that provides in-state college tuition for students with "B" averages.

Even Hawaii, with Utah is one of two states without a lottery or other form of legalized gambling, may consider a change. Aides to Gov. Linda Lingle, long a critic of gambling expansion, said she is open to discussing it as a way to close the state's budget gap.


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