If Senate seat is golden, poker slots will be platinum

Not only will video poker provide the state with revenue we need, it will give authorities control over all the illegal gambling going on now.

That argument from current supporters of the plan to put tens of thousands of video poker machines in bars, truck stops and VFW halls is just a rehash of Illinois' previous failed gambling plans.

On Aug. 8, 1974, Gov. Dan Walker drew the first winning number in the Illinois lottery. Supporters proclaimed state-run gambling as the goose that would lay the golden egg while taking a bite out of crime.

It didn't work out, as we've still got crime and budget woes.

In the 1980s, Gov. Jim Thompson set the stage for riverboat casinos, and Gov. Jim Edgar opened the first riverboat on Sept. 11, 1991, in Alton. Hello, prosperity. Goodbye, crime.

It didn't work out, as we've still got crime and budget woes.

Now Gov. Pat Quinn, the former underdog who opposed gambling expansion, is the big dog about to embark on that same wild, golden goose chase. Proponents say video poker machines will bring in needed tax revenue, and let the state, not the mob, profit from that lucrative market.

"It hasn't worked. It will never work," says John Kindt, a nationally known gambling critic and professor of business and legal policy at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "The very worst thing you can do for the business and the taxpayers is expand gambling."

Bankruptcies, foreclosures, crime and addiction soar in areas with gambling, according to The U.S. International Gambling Report Series, a new 3,000-page study that originated at the University of Illinois. That series reinforces the concept that gambling costs society $3 or more for every $1 it brings in, which was a conclusion reached by the 1999 U.S. National Gambling Impact Study Commission.

"This is the very worst form," Kindt says of the machines he calls the "crack cocaine" of gambling. "It creates the most social problems and is most likely to hook young people, and they are putting it in everybody's back yard. What message does it give Fortune 500 companies when a state with a bad reputation for business and government is now saying, 'We're going to keep doing it, and we're going to do even worse?'"

Asking Illinois politicians to bring ethics and crime-fighting to the video poker market should be more entertaining than watching Roland Burris dance around questions about how he got the Senate seat our indicted, impeached ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich dubbed "(expletive) golden." It's the equivalent of letting the fox guard the golden goose coop. You don't have to be a cynical newspaper guy to suspect that somebody's brother-in-law with connections might profit from the state's huge gambling expansion.

Who will get the licenses to distribute those video poker machines? What bars will get the best machines, and how many will they get? Who will make sure those machines all are on the up-and-up, and that a bar with a license for three machines won't have a fourth? With people openly gambling at those machines, who will make sure there aren't two sets of books, with only a portion of the income reported to the state? Who will make sure the mob politely steps aside and surrenders the video poker market to the state? Who will make sure that a gambling addict banned from casinos doesn't lose his family's savings when he stops for gas? Who will make sure the machines don't take in more money than they should and cheat the losers playing them?

"Imagine the possibilities for fraudulent machine manipulations to increase the 'hold' on devices scattered among thousands of taverns, truck stops and veterans' clubs," says Cal Claus, an Arlington Heights man who has testified before government bodies about the problems he sees with gambling. Retired from National-Louis University in 1991 after more than three decades as a psychology professor, Claus notes that video poker machines use the same random reward system scientists use to develop addictive behavior in rats.

"They (legislators) cover their weakness on the issue of raising taxes by relying on the weakness of drinkers, drivers and vets to engage in addictive gambling," Claus says. "If we look upon the money gained from electronic gambling devices as a form of taxation, that's a pretty narrow tax base for rebuilding our state."

That's bad for business, bad for society and bad for government. But legislators, just like gambling losers who forget about the past, seem confident they'll hit the jackpot this time.

"They're going for the quick buck," Kindt says. "It's short-term gain for them, and long-term pain for everyone else."