Questionable Practices Continue at PA Gaming Board

Gaming Control Board gives Gettysburg casino company fodder for appeal
By DONALD GILLILAND, The Patriot-News


It’s summertime, and the fishing is easy at Pennsylvania’s Gaming Control Board.

The developers behind a proposed casino outside Gettysburg asked the board on Tuesday to reconsider, in light of the recent grand jury report, their decision to award the state’s last resort casino license to another facility.

On Wednesday the board unanimously rejected that request, which surprised no one — including the people who asked.

Rather, the request offered the opportunity — like a well-cast fly — for board members to go on the record one more time about their decision.

There is little more than a week remaining for the unsuccessful casino projects to appeal their loss to the Supreme Court.

New Gaming Board member and former Speaker of the House Keith McCall rose to the bait. “I made my decision first and foremost,” said McCall, “on did they meet the definition of a well-established resort.”

The Gettysburg developers — and many others, including former Gaming Board members — have argued the law requires the primary consideration to be maximizing the revenue to the state for tax relief.

The grand jury report contends previous incarnations of the board “neglected or wholly ignored” the public policy objectives of the law.

Noting that he had a hand in writing the law, McCall said Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Fayette County fit the definition of resort “like a glove, and none of the other applicants came close.”

Both advocates and critics of the Nemacolin project have maintained the law was written with Nemacolin in mind.

The grand jury report criticized the Board’s habit of going into secret executive sessions to discuss things beyond the normally limited scope of such sessions.

The board did that with Nemacolin, and only Nemacolin.

McCall continued. “I was very concerned by the Mason-Dixon application,” he said, “because of concerns raised by the community and the battlefield.”

The board’s own legal rationale stated unequivocally that the casino would not have impacted the battlefield.

The official reasoning did however cite community opposition, specifically a casino-sponsored survey by G. Terry Madonna that showed 38 percent of Adams County residents were opposed to a casino.

That, according to the official reasoning, was “an unacceptably large portion of local residents.”

However, Madonna had submitted a memo into the official record noting that “Surveys in Pennsylvania have consistently shown that 20-25 percent of Pennsylvanians oppose gaming because they believe it is morally wrong. Additionally, it is not unusual to find that one-third oppose legalized gambling in the state.”

The grand jury report suggested the Gaming Board and its investigators do not adequately evaluate applications, and attorneys for Mason-Dixon implied there may have been similar failings in the most recent decision.

Mason-Dixon attorney Stephen Schrier told the board, “You don’t have to get new evidence; you have to go back and look at the evidence you have.”

The board’s official decision also cites a quantity of comments in opposition to the Gettysburg projects that its proponents say indicates the board accepted anonymous, unverified and multiple submissions, suggesting the board has no standard.

“What this means is in the future, it will only require a mediocre Astroturf campaign to defeat one of the applicants because that’s what happened here,” said Mason-Dixon spokesman David LaTorre.

Whether McCall’s additions to the record are trophy trout or chum would ultimately be judged by the Supreme Court, if an appeal is filed.

LaTorre said an appeal is “absolutely” under consideration.

Wednesday was the Board’s first public meeting since the grand jury report was released.

Despite the fact the report focused on actions five or six years ago and the fact the law has since been changed to address some of the concerns it outlines, the Gaming Board members did little to inspire confidence they are operating in a new, more accountable era.

Kenneth Trujillo, one of three lawyers on the board and the only member not to vote for Nemacolin, grilled the Mason-Dixon attorney with prosecutorial verve, suggesting the grand jury report was old news, one-sided and of “zero evidentiary value.”

Having read the grand jury report, Trujillo said, “My conscience is quite clear nobody is pointing fingers at me.”

He may not have read it to the end.

Fifth on the list of the grand jury’s recommendations is the suggestion the law be amended “to explicitly prohibit any person from serving as a member of the board who was an applicant” for a slot machine license.

Trujillo was one of the investors who applied — unsuccessfully — in 2006 for a license to build a casino in Philadelphia.