Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Slotsylvania Gaming Board chair put on the spot
I'm going to make this quick tonight because I want to watch the Pennsylvania Cable Network's rebroadcast of a state House Appropriations committee hearing for the Gaming Control Board at 8 p.m.Ok, I'm an obsessed geek and this sounds like a real yawner, huh?
But wait, this morning's hearing reportedly turned into a raucous pissing match between the state's gambling regulators and the state police over who is to blame for the slots parlor license given to indicted Dunmore billionaire Louis DeNaples.
The Associated Press called it "a noisy debate" right in its lede this afternoon.
I call it must-see TV and even plan to record it. (I wonder if I'll get sued if I put it on YouTube?)
The AP reports that Gaming Control Board chairwoman Mary DiGiacomo Colins told lawmakers that the state police had no legal reason to stay silent about their perjury investigation into DeNaples.
"I believe we did everything a regulatory agency could do," Colins said, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "We believed we had everything we needed."
Don't have PCN on your cable lineup. No worries, you can watch a streaming rebroadcast on PCN's Web site at 8 p.m. so long as you have Apple's QuickTime program.
In other racino and slots news, the Pennsyltucky Politics blog bashes Gov. Ed Rendell - not for failing to show up at none of the openings of the state's seven slots parlors, as state Rep. Paul Clymer takes Rendell to task for - but for treating his fellow Slotsylvanians with utter disdain.
"These are people who lead very gray lives," Rendell said of the senior citizens who flock to casinos in a 2006 interview with the Lancaster New Era, the Patriot-News' Brett Lieberman writes."They don't see their sons and daughters very much. They don't have much social interaction," Rendell said. "There's not a whole lot of good things that happen in their month. But if you put them on the bus, they're excited. They're happy. They have fun. They see bright lights. They hear music. They pull that slot machine and with each pull they think they have a chance to win... . It's unbelievable what brightness and cheer it brings to older Pennsylvanians. Unbelievable."
Unbelievable is right.
Or as Clymer (R-Bucks) wrote last week in a letter to the editor, "In his first term, Gov. Rendell aggressively promoted the social and economic benefits of this dubious industry. Property tax relief for all was his standard cry. When the General Assembly passed the Pennsylvania Race Horse Development and Gaming Act in the midnight hours of July 4, 2004, Gov. Rendell made a beeline for Philadelphia Park (Bensalem, PA) to sign the bill into law legalizing up to 61,000 slot machines.
"Now, he cannot be found at any grand opening. Is it too much to question his whereabouts? It seems to me that Gov. Rendell has shunned the casino crowd."
Too bad he didn't shun DeNaples' political contributions too, but that's another story.
For more about Louis DeNaples and to read my complete take on this long-predicted Slotsylvania snafu, click here.
Labels: casino, Ed Rendell, Louis DeNaples, Mary DiGiacomo Colins, Pennsylvania, slots
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The Daily Rant by Dave Ralis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
The Daily Rant by Dave Ralis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
