Tuesday, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed model legislation that creates treatment and prevention programs for our state’s growing number of problem gamblers. While other states fund similar programs, Washington is the first to legislate a permanent funding source, thus avoiding a biennial appropriations battle.
The legislation is modest in that it only budgets $750,000 a year through fees on commercial gaming operators, a fraction of the amount needed to meet current demand; by comparison, Oregon, with roughly half our population, spends $3.5 million a year. Washington Tribes have agreed to kick in an additional $450,000 to help fill the gap, but the commitment is neither permanent, nor nearly large enough to be commensurate with the size of the tribal gaming industry.
Still, anybody who has ever tried to push a bill through the legislature — especially one that raises taxes or fees — knows that even this watered down bill is an accomplishment. Many deserve credit for its passage, but as Peter Callaghan observed last week in The News Tribune, probably none more so than WA’s leading advocate for problem gamblers, Jennifer McCausland.
Jennifer McCausland, who joined the fight in memory of her son Ben, whose death was indirectly caused by his gambling addiction, believes the program is too timid. She opposed the final bill.
“I’m so terribly disappointed that I couldn’t activate any legislator’s sense of obligation to do more than the very minimum,” she wrote in an e-mail. “After all these years of neglect of the problem and overt willingness to have both hands in the pockets of gamblers, this was the best they could do?”
But McCausland doesn’t give herself enough credit. Her advocacy put a human face on the issue. And her scolding pushed legislators into doing the right thing.
I first met Jennifer last spring, when I was looking for ammunition to battle Tim Eyman’s gambling industry backed effort to legalize slot machines, the incredibly selfish and stupid Initiative 892. Jennifer is a passionate and persuasive advocate on behalf of compulsive gamblers and their families, and while I had hoped to recruit her to the fight against I-892, it was she who quickly converted me to her cause.
She taught me that gambling could be just as addictive as drugs and alcohol, and the consequences at least as devastating, destroying businesses, families, and lives. And I learned that problem gamblers were not merely an unfortunate by-product of the gambling industry, but rather, its core business… with over 50% of industry profits coming from 5% of its customers. Indeed, the science of slot machine design is the science of creating compulsion.
I spoke with Jennifer shortly after the bill signing, and she was perhaps a bit more philosophical with me than in her email to Peter Callaghan. While still disappointed over the amount of money allocated, she recognizes the accomplishment, and hopes it is only the first step. She told me that Olympia created a public health crisis by allowing a massive expansion of legalized gambling with little thought to the consequences, but that legislators were about to get their “eyes opened” to how big this problem really is.
“Once the program is fully implemented and legislators see how far demand for treatment outstrips supply,” Jennifer predicted, “it will be harder for them to ignore the need for adequate funding.”
Given the size of both our population and gambling industry, Jennifer believes the proper funding level should be at least $3.5 million a year, and possibly twice that. She also strongly believes that the tribal casinos must become a permanent part of the solution. But despite her resoluteness, she does not plan to lobby this issue full time, and has turned much of her advocacy efforts towards youth gambling, an issue she believes is dangerously ignored, not just in WA state, but nationwide.
She has converted me to that cause as well, and I will continue to support her efforts as best I can.
not to hard to convince you, liberals believe anything. i agree the tribes should put up a majority of the funding. afterall they don’t pay taxes and they use all our services.
Only a socialist would consider this a public health crisis. How about just shutting the darn things down? State wants gambling, but then also wants social control.
I really don’t like getting the free ride, but conservatives with an income sadly realize we all get a free ride in our taxes by virtue of low income folks pissing away money on gambling. I’d gladly shut the whole thing down (tribal, lotto, you name it) and pay a bit more taxes.
Why was gambling legalized all over the place in this state in the first place? This is a surprise to people here that gambling destroys lives, families and businesses? God…how slow can you people be? The research was already there….
And I’ll tell you what….throwing money at this won’t cure the problem anymore than it fixes the problem to give the gambler you know more money.You have to get rid of the casinos…period. And let’s face it…this State will NEVER do that.
Poker tournaments are such a great analogy for consumer capitalism. Once you get sucked in, you find it is enormously difficult to get out. There can be only one ultimate winner, a few lesser folks take pitifully smaller rewards, and the mass are simply losers. And yet more and more people keep buying in to games and to the sheer misguided hope of winning that one time. The only silver lining in the Indian gaming business is that they cannot sell alcohol(chardonnay free zones) at their casinos. At least the losers there have clearer heads about it all.
The level of vitriolic bile that is volcanically exploding up from the acid churning bowels of the trolls is reaching some monumental proportions. If the intent is to so overflow the rhetoric to force more stable minds and healthier gastrointestinal systems away from this blogspace, they aren’t very successful. If the intent is to create a space full of adolescent insults and elementary name calling, they may think they are succeeding. However, some people actually learned that words have no power to affect their minds unless one chooses to give them such; i can’t imagine why anyone would find offense from the likes of the volcanic trolls here.
Throwing money at a State created problem like this will not cure it anymore than giving more money to a gambler to pay his debts cures THAT problem. So the State in it’s arrogance [or idiocy, whichever] created this problem and now wants to tax us to fix it?
Yes…there is a HUGE problem with gambling here…I had never seen anything like it till I moved here….but the only thing that will “cure” it is to close down the casinos.
A program that relies on an even larger base of problem gamblers in order to treat them later, sounds like a winner. Sounds like a gamblers recycling program.
We do occasionally agree, Goldy, and this is definetly one of those times. Everybody seems to think gambling doesn’t hurt anyone and is a good source of revenue; but your post highlights the problems that always come along with gambling.
Also, I think this issue is indirectly related to another one of your hot buttons, tax reform, which Olympia also doesn’t want to deal with, but that’s another post.
EVERYBODY PLEASE NOTE!!!!
My blog spam filter includes a lot of gambling related words… extremely inconvenient, but unavoidable. So please be patient if your comments do not immediately show up.
I’m in the process of upgrading to WordPress 1.5, and I’m hoping it offers me a more elegant solution.
Goldy, I wish you could have given us more details about what this money pays for, and how effective these programs are. Even $3.5 million would amount to only 50 cents a year for each state resident. Our society is full of temptations, and it seems to me that gambling is just one more temptation to separate fools from their money.
Gamblers are in denial about the odds against them. Thinking people don’t gamble. The glitzy casinos, the gambling industry’s profits, and the state’s gambling tax revenues all come from the customer’s pocket. It’s mathematically impossible unless the average customer walks out with a lot less money than he had when he walked in.
Goldy,
In the first paragraph you state “Tuesday, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed model legislation…” then in the third paragraph you state “…even this watered down bill is an accomplishment.”
You contradict yourself once again.
Spyder@4,
Apparently you have never been to an Indian Casino. They most certainly DO sell alcohol.
The cynical goal of all this should be to keep the gamblers alive and moderately gambling forever. Give em dialysis so that can sit forever pulling the slot levers…. more they gamble, even if state has to spend to prop them up, the less taxes i have to pay
Cynically “yeah” to sin tax of this sort, though honestly we’d be better off not having state sponsored “state makes money” gambling.
It was a mistake for the state to get into the gambling business, and I’d much rather see Gregoire devoting her energy to getting the state out of the business, and reducing the gambling opportunities in our communities.
The Indian casinos are a totally different situation. They’re authorized by Congress, regulated by the federal government, and the state has no say. And unlike the state lottery or state-licensed card rooms, Indian gambling isn’t on every street corner or in our neighborhoods. Most people have to drive a considerable distance to drop their money in an Indian casino.
I say let the Indians take the fools’ money; we took their land, and the casinos are paying for education, health programs, and providing jobs to the poorest group of people in our society. There will always be people who insist on throwing their money away in slot machines or at the tables, and sending them to the Indians is small compensation for the generations of expropriation and discrimination we inflicted on the Indians.
Don’t I recall the ORIGINAL Lottery including a mandatroy set aside to treat gambling addiction?
Goldy, this is why your side of the aisle can’t be trusted with our money and the legislature.
Wasn’t the election basically a lottery, random number generator run by KC? Maybe the recovering gamblers are running our numbers…
She has converted me to that cause as well, and I will continue to support her efforts as best I can. -by Goldy, 05/12/2005, 1:57 PM
Well, no kidding..now there’s a news flash.
PS, A great BIG thanks to Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics for his preview button where I regularly check my work.
Get the hint yet, Goldy?
Does PETA kill Pet Libs too?
I just heard on the news that the money that was supposed to go to help young Seattle prostitutes change their lives has DISAPEARED…….maybe they were gambling with it? NAH…not the liberals in Seattle, they would never do anything like that ,right?
that would be DISAPPEARED…..
preview button PLEASE…….
Ha! Ha! 2 grand on the hard eight! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! Zero taxes! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! One penny is too much! Ha! Ha!
Goldy
You say “blah blah…nor nearly large enough to be commensurate with the size of the tribal gaming industry”. How large is the State Gaming Industry (mini-casinos and lottery) compared to the Tribes’?
The Lottery brings gambling right into people’s homes with all of their advertising. And right into their neighborhood grocery store or mini mart. Not to mention the mini-casinos sprouting on every arterial. This type of “in your face” penetration of the Lottery into everyone’s lives is far more likely to creat problem gamblers than any Tribal casino, IMHO.
Maybe our gov. will grow some balls and try to wean the State off the Lottery or the towns and counties off the mini-casinos? Not likely, it’s far easier to just throw some taxpayer money at the problem and claim that progress is being made.
I agree with Patrick 13 above: tribal casinos are the smallest contributor to the problem. And they are the first good thing that has happened to many tribes for a long time. That explains why the State would go after them first if they could figure out a way to screw the Tribes.
Wingo Nut Loop……do you know what the amount of money you would collect from tax payers if you taxed them 100% or 0%? The same. Nothing. You actually get more money when you tax less and spend with more restraint. A concept that is tough for most liberals to embrace….
Grerk Idiot @ 14
As long as we’re talking about “trust” I’d just like to mention that your side of the aisle has proven (again) they can’t be trusted with …
1. The lives of our soldiers;
2. The economy and our jobs;
3. Our retirement savings;
4. Education, health care, or social needs;
5. Young boys.
christmasghost @ 20
Your statement, “You actually get more money when you tax less,” is nonsense, just as supply-side economics was nonsense. If you keep cutting taxes, at some point revenue becomes zero. Revenue is a bell-shaped curve, and just as high taxes reduce revenue at one end of the curve, low taxes reduce revenue at the other end of the curve — a fact you ignore all too conveniently for your argument to hold any water.
Obviously, if government spends less, it needs less revenue. But spending less is not something this generation of Republicans knows how to do. Government spending has grown three times as fast under Bush as it did under Clinton, and worse, we’re not more better off — much of that money has been wasted or stolen.
Rant against liberals all you want. Liberals have made enormous contributions to the prosperity, health, and well being of every American (including you). Conservatives are AGAINST everything that has benefited the American people in the last 75 years. What the hell are you people FOR besides lining your own pockets?
1. ‘I Actually Voted for the $87 Billion Before I Voted Against It’
2. The U.S. Treasury has just released some new data that will bring cheer to the advocates of lower tax rates and heartburn to those who advocate higher tax rates.
3. A Rigged calculator
4. UK, Canada, The Netherlands: soci*lism has failed evertime it’s been tried.
5. “Gov. Ted Kulongoski expressed sympathy Wednesday for the families of Neil Goldschmidt and the 14-year-old girl he sexually abused as Portland mayor in the 1970s.?
I thought that was YOUR mayor of Spokane’s defense, or was it uSP’s policy on opposing viewpoints?
Christmasghost @ 20
“You actually get more money when you tax less and spend with more restraint. A concept that is tough for most liberals to embrace.”
It is a tough concept to embrace because we’ve been hearing about this concept since Mr. Reagan took office. Unfortunately, Ronnie forgot about the second half of the “supply side economics” equation—the part where you shrink the government and spend less.
Consequently, Clinton is the only true fiscal conservative out of the last four presidents. The last three Republican presidents were seduced by a “get rich quick” scheme that put us into a (deep, deep) fiscal hole. Talk about gambling problems. . . .
Patrick said “Conservatives are AGAINST everything that has benefited the American people in the last 75 yearsâ€
Then STOP Making Sense said “Wanna “no†something? Just ask a Democrat and see how well they “no†the presidents agenda.
STOP, How the hell can you equate the Bush Agenda with Benefiting the American people?
That is exactly where your long winded, poorly worded and strikingly absurd post breaks down, falls on it’s ass, and becomes nothing but wasted bandwidth and devastation of a population of otherwise benign bits and bytes.
Fucking Moron.
Fucking Moron. -Comment by Donnageddon— 5/13/05 @ 10:48 am
A perfect example of a frustrated, juvenile, impotent liberal with no ideas and nothing to say – thanks for illustrating it so well.
Here’s what I don’t understand about the whole gambling thing in this state. The Lotto is essentially a numbers racket. When the Mafia does it, they call it organized crime. When the state does the same thing, ” . . . but it’s for the CHILDREN!!!” they gush. As with many other supposedly beneficial things, the social costs probably far exceed the benefits.
I do think Tim Eyman and some others have a point about the tribes, though: Their raking in the dough (to the point of fronting millions to defeat Eyman’s I-892. How many low income housing units would that have paid for? But I digress.) yet their contribution to this is miniscule and voluntary and they don’t pay taxes. They are the ones largely responsible for the social costs of gambling, so I say let’s send the Emerald Queen a bill for the treatment of these problem gamblers.
The only silver lining in the Indian gaming business is that they cannot sell alcohol(chardonnay free zones) at their casinos. At least the losers there have clearer heads about it all.
Oh yes they can, and they do. I was at the Muckleshoot awhile back for the buffet – paid for by stupid gamblers – and had wine with dinner. They have several bars set up throughout the casino.