Joan Barron: Gambling — We’re In The Big Time Now

CHEYENNE– Wyoming gaming has been so stunningly successful it has outgrown its volunteer regulatory board that has been overseeing the legal games.

What is needed for the future is a professional board like the Wyoming Public Service Commission (PSC).

PSC members are appointed by the governor and receive salaries for regulating the state’s public utilities that provide services to consumers, mainly electricity, natural gas and telephone. They are schooled, educated in what they do which is plenty complex. 

Gaming commission members today are citizens who receive no salary but can collect the same amount of per diem as legislators for attending meetings. They also are appointed by the governor. 

These members are seasoned, intelligent people who are dedicated to their job on the board.

But they are not pros in gaming.

But we are in a situation here where a government agency is under-staffed and needs help with the applications and all that. Do we have enough investigators to probe the identities behind all those LCC names.? Probably not.

Wyoming people who live in small towns may not see what is happening. But we do in Cheyenne in downtown and now out in the county.

The latest ads for the new Swan Ranch Horse Palace, sprawled near the Colorado border, are aimed at Fort Collins residents.

Drive north to the Palace, the ads blare, to find games, booze, a restaurant and even a donut shop. Then they show all those machines, colorful and twinkly.

It seems clear, however,  that Wyoming citizens do not want to be another Vegas.

Setting up a professional board, with pros on it who know gaming, how  it works and how it can be kept straight is the first step to a clean, limited gaming state.

(One of my high school classmates, a former boyfriend, lived in Las Vegas and had a magician’s act there as an opener to a top act. He said the only game or machine that wasn’t rigged was Baccarat.) 

The top priority interim study for the Joint Interim Appropriations (JAC) Committee this year is gaming. The study itself is being conducted by an outside source hired by the commission. A report is expected this fall.

During a JAC meeting last month, as reported thoroughly by  Cowboy State Daily reporter Leo Wolfson, the possibility of a professional gaming board was raised by Tom Lubnau.

Lubnau is a former house speaker who is Gov. Mark Gordon’s liaison to the committee.

Such a board, Lubnau he said during the segment I monitored,  is needed to set policy.

His personal concern, Lubnau said, is that as mineral revenues decline, the Legislature  will look at gaming as an income source for the future.

“We had to wait for a lady to die to balance the state’s budget,”  Lubnau said. He was referring to the bonanza in inheritance tax the state received in the 1980’s when a woman living in Jackson died.  Her late husband had been a Florida boat and ship builder.

With millions from the estate in the bank the happy development immediately stemmed all talk of a new tax or a tax increase. 

Lubnau is right; that has been the pattern in Wyoming for decades  Just wait for another boom or another miracle.  Don’t ever talk about new taxes or a tax increase. It will bring you grief.

If this latest crop of hard right lawmakers, the Freedom Caucus, gain control of the House next year, the Legislature will never permit a tax increase or any type or any expansion of government.

They probably would oppose creating a professional Gaming Commission as well. 

The hard right folks would rather we be another Vegas.

Elections have consequences.

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Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net