Illinois has lost its way

State can't rush into legalized online gaming

By DAN WALKER
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

This is an open letter to Gov. Pat Quinn.

Dear Pat,

Lots of folks are having nightmares about that bill just passed by the Illinois Senate (SB737) that would bring a vast cornucopia of gambling to Illinois. Please, right now, run up a big, bright red warning flag on this legislation. The sponsor, Sen. Terry Link, and his cohorts are now pushing for passage of the bill by the House, sending it to you when it reconvenes in early January and if that fails, he vows renewal in the next session commencing in February.

This audacious legislation would give Chicago a city-owned Casino Royale, plus four more new casinos at Waukegan, Rockford, Ford Heights and Danville.

That’s just the beginning. All nine existing riverboat casinos can become greatly expanded land-based operations. The state’s six horse racing tracks can be transformed into land-based “racinos” with all-in gambling sites.

En toto, the state’s present 10,800 gambling positions at nine casinos will come close to 40,000 at all the casinos and racinos under the Link legislation. Add the estimated 45,000 legalized video poker machines at taverns, bars and restaurants throughout the state already scheduled to arrive next year. The total gambling reality should also include the thousands of illegal video poker machines now run by the mob in the Chicago metropolitan Area.

Pat, do you really want Illinois to become second only to Nevada in wide-open gambling? The Land of Lincoln last year earned the unfortunate sobriquet of the most corrupt state in the nation.

Surely, it shouldn’t be allowed to also be known as the second highest gambling state in the nation. And do you really expect the mob to keep its grubby fingers out of this dramatically increased gambling cash flow?

Perhaps more important, Pat, look at the flip side of the state’s increased revenue from large-scale gambling — the dark side that inevitably will adversely affect the state’s quality of life.

Look at what’s happened to real life people in other states with massive legalized gambling. Dramatic increases in divorce, child and spousal abuse, rape, suicide, bankruptcy, alcohol and drug addiction, prostitution, high school dropouts, and the crimes that more and more addicted gamblers, men and women resort to in order to pay gambling debts.

Your staff can get hard information on this from Anita Bedell at Illinois Church Action on Alcohol and Addiction Problems and from the crime savvy Art Bilek at the Chicago Crime Commission.

They will convince you that, on the state’s grand balance sheet, the human debris debits from crime and social costs will over time far outweigh the revenue credits from gambling.

Pat, as you sit in that wood-paneled Lincoln Library in the Executive Mansion where I once played poker, please look hard at that bronze bust of Honest Abe. Reflect deeply on the human cost of unrestrained gambling.

If you cannot now bring yourself to threaten a veto, then I beg you to strongly adjure the legislature to deliberate long and hard about this abominable legislation. Finally, absolutely do not let it be a New Year’s gift to the people of Illinois.

Dan Walker, governor of Illinois from 1973-77, is the former president of the Chicago Crime Commission and author of “The Maverick and The Machine: Dan Walker Tells His Story.” He now lives in Rosarito Beach, Mexico.