Board to take applications for slot-machine licenses

Mark Scolforo

Friday, Sept. 9, 2005 | 9:46 a.m.

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- The Gaming Control Board decided Thursday to let the state's six horse tracks begin applying for "conditional" slot-machine gambling licenses within the next week, and its chairman said he hoped licenses could be awarded as early as February.

Applications will be posted on the board's Web site over the next week, giving the three harness and three thoroughbred tracks until Oct. 31 to complete them.

But an internal disagreement about how to regulate suppliers -- companies that will act as middlemen between casinos and manufacturers -- threatens to delay the process because of a requirement that board decisions be nearly unanimous.

Chairman Tad Decker said the dispute centers on which of three different approaches to adopt regarding suppliers. Two proposals would spread them around the state among either two regions or five regions, and the third does not require any regional diversity.

Action on the issue was pulled from consideration at Thursday's meeting because of a lack of consensus; the gambling law essentially allows a five-way veto among board members appointed by the General Assembly's four legislative caucuses and the governor.

Supplier and manufacturer licenses must be awarded at least 90 days before casinos can be licensed.

"If we can't get this done by Sept. 28, this will delay our February-March time period" for starting to award tracks conditional licenses, Decker told reporters afterward.

After the applications are deemed complete, which may take a couple of months, the board has one year to act on all of them, which it must do all at once.

The gambling board also announced it would take applications for the three classes of permanent licenses -- tracks, stand-alone parlors and resorts -- in November and December.

Decker said he has no sense of how many entities will compete for the 14 available permanent licenses, although the six tracks and an expected seventh harness track are considered virtual shoo-ins.

Also in the Capitol on Thursday were living historians portraying Civil War icons Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln. They were part of an ongoing effort by the group No Casino Gettysburg to fight a plan to seek a slots casino near Gettysburg National Military Park.

"Don't let greed or traffic flow influence your decision on this," said Dick Crozier, a Cortland, N.Y., historian who portrayed Lee, a Confederate general. "It is simple -- a casino in Gettysburg is a bad idea."

Decker noted that the board was still doing interviews for its chief counsel position, and jokingly encouraged the man playing Lincoln to consider it.

Also Thursday, Decker declined comment on Michael Schwoyer, a senior Gaming Control Board enforcement official charged with disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and harassment after an Aug. 21 incident at a Harrisburg bar.

"I think you generally wait until the court system decides these issues," Decker said.

Schwoyer was not at Thursday's meeting because he was attending a training session, Decker said.