Any suggestion that Colorado’s $5 limit on casino gambling be raised should be smothered at the table. The Post opposes gambling as a revenue-raising mechanism because the related societal ills far outweigh any benefit.
Low-income and compulsive gamblers already fritter away too much of their limited income without speeding things up, as was done in Deadwood, S.D., where the limit was raised to $100 six years ago.
Casino officials aired raising the $5 limit in a recent meeting with Democratic U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, state Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden, and officials and business leaders in Gilpin County. (Salazar and Fitz-Gerald both received campaign contributions from the casino industry.)
Colorado voters approved limited-stakes gambling in Central City, Black Hawk and Cripple Creek in 1990 as a way to preserve the old mining towns. Former state legislator Gerald Kopel, long a critic of the gaming industry, said limited-stakes gambling was sold to voters as “a mom-and-pop operation” in which stores in Central City, for example, would “sell lots of things and have a couple of slots in the back.” Instead, gambling has practically obliterated the historic sections of Black Hawk and Central City.
Kopel also pointed out that the state gambling commission’s liberal interpretation of size limitations in the constitutional amendment nearly doubled the number of slot machines. And “not one cent of the money” generated by casino taxes has gone for treatment of compulsive gamblers. (Studies by the National Gambling Impact Survey Commission and the state of Minnesota show large numbers of compulsive gamblers have low incomes.)
Lois Rice, executive director of the Colorado Gaming Association, told Post business writer Andy Vuong that Salazar asked to meet with gaming officials. Salazar spokesman Cody Wertz said the senator was merely giving an overview of Senate action, looking forward to next session, and discussing issues like immigration and health care. Colorado gambling, Wertz said, is “not a federal issue.”
Increasing the bet limits would mean that the casinos could expand the types of table games beyond the current blackjack and poker to add roulette, craps and other games, according to Rice.
Deadwood’s increased limits, she noted, led to a “substantial increase in tourism.” Tax revenues from gambling fund South Dakota’s tourism promotion efforts.
“It’s just in the very early stages of discussion if it’s a viable thing to pursue,” Rice says. Casino operators whine that Colorado’s the only jurisdiction in the country with a $5 bet limit. “As an industry, I think we need to do something,” said Steve Roark.
We think otherwise. Coloradans long ago realized they’d been hoodwinked and rejected later schemes to extend gambling to Manitou Springs and Trinidad and put video slots at Colorado racetracks.
The existing $100 million in yearly tax revenue from state’s 46 casinos is a sizable sum – but instead of expanding gambling, a better solution to Colorado’s fiscal limitations would be permanently removing the related provisions of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
