Wednesday, April 18, 2001 | 9:29 a.m.
Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program "Face to Face" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. His column for the Sun appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@ vegas.com
IT WAS HARD to miss the irony:
On the same day that the Judiciary Committee passed an Internet gaming bill sponsored by Assemblyman Harvey Whittemore, D-Gaming, California's lower house enacted a ban on Web wagering. Now which of those states is the major gambling mecca these days? I've forgotten.
At any rate, the peregrinations of Nevada's Internet pathway bill tell a story that could only happen in Carson City's Legislative Building -- one in which a bill of utmost import to the gaming industry was carried by a member of the lower house's minority party (and these guys are supposedly political geniuses?), almost taken away from her and then changed so as create barriers to entry to all but the largest gamers. And amid murmurings of discontent and concern by gaming regulators, the lawmakers dutifully listened to Whittemore & Co., who took the measure out of the hands of Merle Berman, the Las Vegas Republican, and rammed it through over slot manufacturers who wanted to get into the business.
It was raw politics at work to enact a half-baked idea -- the notion that being first with Internet gaming would protect the state. This is so cockamamie, until you realize that the Strip doyens who wanted it will not be hurt by Web gaming, but that only lesser properties downtown, in Laughlin and Northern Nevada will suffer.
I will not waste time by reiterating the facile notion that the Strip is the de facto government in the state capital. We all know that. Whittemore & Co. can make art tax bills sound like watershed public policy, they can make the casinos into financially withering corporations and they can make measures to retroactively erase jury verdicts seem like normal legislative intervention into the judicial process.
Fine. But this is a different story entirely. This bill, the Berman-Whittemore creation, puts struggling properties (yes, there are several) a mouse click away from extinction, all in the name of letting the Strip folks develop their Internet sites when they are ready. And they are ready. MGM MIRAGE boss Terry Lanni said recently that the company has a half-dozen websites up and running to be used as tests until Internet gambling becomes a reality.
Lawmakers did their best to show they were being tough -- setting up a fee stricture that forces companies to pony up seven figures just for the privilege of getting into the business. They did this as the Nevada Resort Association, channeling through Whittemore, yelped just as Brer Rabbit did before being thrown into the brier patch.
And in so doing, they ensured that the gamers could crush the slot folks, just as they did two years ago when they used 63 hand puppets to fix a contract dispute with IGT and friends. Oh, it's a privileged license, all right. And very few can have the privilege.
Some of this makes sense. Keeping the venue in Nevada. The Strip bosses know gaming best. And so on.
But where was the debate on the merits of legalizing Internet gaming in the first place? Did any of our inestimable Gang of 63 think it might be worth considering what ex-Sen. Richard Bryan has called the conversion of every living room in the country into a gambling parlor? Should anyone be worried about the social/cultural/economic aspects of this decision?
Of course not. Why ask such silly questions when the idea here is the same as it was when Atlantic City opened, when other states legalized gambling and when Indian casinos took off? It is called: a piece of the action.
Funny, some of those lawmakers in California do see a problem with the 'Net. Said one legislator: "People can literally go online with a credit card, click and lose a ton of money."
Again, it's hard to miss the irony. That -- getting more suckers into the mix -- is what this is all about.
At least the shareholders will be happy.
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