Mayor’s Row……..by Ned Mitchell

You just have to hand it to our state legislators as they have dumped another fiasco in the laps of local government. As we all know folks all over the state have been clamoring for years about the need of a capital bill that would pay for new schools, hospitals, road, bridges and all of those projects that bring smiling politicos out of the wood work to cut the ribbons. Did I mention that other projects with less glamorous headlines are also in that capital bill? It is typical though that the good and bad are all mixed up together so if you want the good projects, you have to accept the bad ones too. Fair enough in my book; bring on the cash!

To pay for all of these necessary (ahem) projects money had to be found. One of the sources of potential income was the legalization of video poker gambling. Lets’ be honest here, we have had video poker gambling for years right here around us, including Sesser, and we as public officials have looked the other way as folks put their hard earned money into a computerized slot machine in the hopes they would find easy money. The truth of the matter is there is a reason this type of gambling is called the “crack cocaine” of gambling because of its’ highly addictive nature.

The typical gambling operation around here found some shady individuals forming shady companies to install these poker machines throughout the state. If you owned a business and allowed the poker devices to be put in your business then you would in most instances profit 50 per cent of the money that went into the machine.

To explain how addictive these are when they first came out one could only put in a quarter at a time and play. Today these machines will gobble up a $20 bill faster than you can blink your eye and stand ready for the next one and they will keep feeding the gambler the false pretense that the “big” royal flush is just around the corner. Some folks spend their entire paycheck in a short period of time and go home empty handed and depressed that they have worked 40 hours only to lose it all in 2 hours or so.

The bottom line to all gambling is the fact that it is a tax on low income people. If you will notice gambling casinos are often located in economically depressed areas where folks tend to want to fork over their money for a snowballs chance of hitting pay dirt and the chance to have a better life. Most of the folks buying lottery tickets and aggravating people like me who are forced to wait to pay for our gasoline while someone scratches off their lottery ticket; are folks who cannot really afford to spend what little money they have on lottery tickets. The State of Illinois knows full well that well to do people rarely gamble their money. It is usually the unemployed or folks on a fixed income that provide millions of dollars for the State to fund their operations on. So, in my opinion, the lottery, casinos, and video poker are all a “tax” on poor people, those who can ill afford to be wasting their money on a game that finds you having a better chance of getting struck by lightning twice than winning.

When this issue first arose back in the summer, we were told by state politicians that perhaps a public referendum would be placed on the ballot to see if Illinoisans wanted video gambling legalized in their communities. Scratch that idea, a few quickly put together hearings in front of a legislative committee was all the public input that was allowed. This bill was rammed through in a hurry. Governor Quinn has signed the bill and the new law is in place.

Legislators though left themselves an escape hatch and placed in the law the option for local city councils and county boards to opt out of the proposal and not allow this scourge to infect their friends and neighbors. DuPage County, one of the largest in the state has already voted to ban the gambling. I might add here that DuPage County is one of the wealthier areas of the state. Locally Carbondale has voted to ban the gambling in their community.

We in Sesser, along with other communities and the Franklin County Board will have to make the decision concerning whether or not we allow legalized gambling in our cities. Initially the new law said that no gambling would be allowed within 1,000 feet of a church or school. Officials soon discovered that would eliminate a lot of potential gambling spots so now the law reads you cannot be within 100 feet of a church or school.

We are taking the time to study the issue in Sesser and are open to suggestions from those who live here. I have mixed feelings about this revenue producer. On the face of it, I do feel like it hits poor people the hardest and with the loss of spending money dumped into one of these machines it will ultimately hurt the grocer, hardware store, clothier and other businesses in our communities. After all there is only so much money available to spend and if we see people spending a huge portion of their money on gambling then it is reasonable to believe that legitimate businesses will suffer. None of us have an endless supply of money and if we spend $100 gambling then that is $100 less we have to spend on other goods and services.

We plan on getting comments from all those who want to become involved in this decision and welcome your comments! Once we have studied the issue we, like every other community, will have to decide if we want gambling or not. That, my friends, is how the legislature dumped the issue in the laps of local officials. You cannot say they are not creative!