When it was announced there would be a legislative study committee on gambling, some of us thought -- perhaps naively hoped would be a better way to put it -- that it would be a comprehensive study, including such topics as state dependence on gambling revenue and the overall effects, positive and negative, on Hoosier citizens. But apparently the sole concern will be what to do about increasing competition, currently from Michigan and Illinois, perhaps in the near future from Kentucky and Ohio.
We have to look at how we deliver gaming in Indiana," said Van Haaften, D-Mount Vernon. "We need to see how it should look in 2010, as opposed to how it was seen back in 1993," when the state's casino law passed.
That could mean eliminating the requirement that Indiana's riverboat casinos be capable of cruising -- even though none of them do -- or allowing them to rebuild on land.
It could mean changing the casinos' tax structure so that owners are encouraged to develop larger resort properties and by simplifying an admisions tax so owners aren't punished financially when patrons come and go from the casino floor.
Or it could mean allowing casinos to give free drinks to customers, a common practice in Las Vegas.
Luke Kenley, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and co-chair of the study committee, says the goal will be to "look at things that will keep the industry healthy but don't allow it to spread to the point where it becomes a social problem," which may make him even more naive than me. I think the attempt to stop the spread of gambling is probably a futile effort, and when do individual problems become serious enough to be called a "social" problem? If 5 percent of Hoosiers instead of 2 percent have gambling addictions? If gambling sucks $50 million a year that would be spent in local communities instead of $40 million? If crime attendant to gambling plagues 20 cities instead of 10? Where exactly is this magic line?
