High casino bid can't be top criterion
A state with a multibillion-dollar deficit.
A highly sought gambling casino license that's up for bid, with the highest offer to the state so far at nearly a half-billion dollars.
It's a collision course that doesn't entirely reassure us that the Illinois Gaming Board will keep to its pledge to award the casino license - the 10th in the state - based primarily on the "character (and) ... integrity of the applicant."
Even in the first steps of the bidding process, when the gaming board last week narrowed the field to three contenders, questions came from as lofty a source as Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who wondered exactly how the gaming board addressed concerns about mob ties that led the state to revoke the license for Rosemont's Emerald Casino in 1999, before the casino ever opened.
Rosemont, whose officials strongly denied the mob allegations at that time, is among three sites that made it through the gaming board's first cuts on Friday. Trilliant Gaming Ill. LLC bid $435 million for a license to build a casino there. Other finalists are Waukegan Gaming LLC, which bid $225 million for the license for a Waukegan site, and Midwest Gaming, bidding $100 million for the right to build a casino in Des Plaines.
Four that didn't make the cut, in Harvey, Calumet City, Stickney and Country Club Hills, raised other questions about how some of the finalists meet Illinois' historic goal of locating casinos in economically disadvantaged communities.
And there's another question: Is it advisable to authorize a new gambling casino when revenue from the nine already in Illinois dropped nearly $42 million in October compared to the same single month in 2007?
The Grand Victoria in Elgin, just down the Jane Addams Tollway from Rosemont and Des Plaines, had the biggest revenue drop among Chicago-area casino sites, down 27 percent from the previous October.
The questions are there, but the Illinois Gaming Board so far has given few answers. We urge the gaming board to set a new standard for transparency in this decision-making process, which continues with presentations by the three finalists during an open meeting Nov. 25. Releasing its own staff analysis of the seven original competing bids would be one solid step the gaming board could take toward that goal.
Illinois Gaming Board Chairman Aaron Jaffe said gaining the most money for the state will be one of his main objectives in choosing a winning bidder.
But it can't be the No. 1 criterion.
Before money enters the decision-making process, the gaming board needs to make sure that not just its members but also its critics have access to the information to judge whether the remaining bidders for the casino license have indeed met the standards of character and integrity.