Good bet for accountability

Good bet for accountability

Like the natural gas industry, Pennsylvania's other big state-endorsed enterprise - casino gambling - remains a work in progress.

Just as the state was unprepared for the broad implications of the natural gas industry even while spurring it forward, it wasn't ready for the implications of gambling when the Legislature approved it in 2004.

Gambling advocates promised the most comprehensive law and most transparent regulation and enforcement process among gambling states but then delivered a law and process that, often, have been messy and murky.

Conflicts of interest, lines of authority for licensing and compliance investigations, a back-door supermajority voting system on the board that serves politics more than accountability, the ability to award licenses to felons and grossly inadequate measures to fight gambling addiction all have adversely affected the system's credibility at times.

A bill and two of its amendments, passed unanimously this week by the state House, should help to address some of those problems.

The bill would require the Gaming Control Board to post on its website accurate descriptions of all requests for information the board receives under the state's Right to Know Law.

It also would require posting of whether the requested information was provided and the outcomes of appeals to the Office of Open Records and the courts.

To help fight gambling addiction, the bill also would require casinos to send monthly statements to its customers enrolled in reward programs. Casinos track those players' gambling to assess their eligibility for various incentives. The bill requires that the information be sent to those gamblers so they will be able to assess, on a single statement, their overall win-loss experience.

Table games were authorized for casinos about four years after the original bill authorized only slots casinos.

Another amendment to the current bill would require more state revenue derived from table games to go toward property tax relief.

These measures should be the beginning of a broader effort to boost accountability