Alabama: State derives no revenue from gambling despite presence of [Indian] casinos in Alabama

Just another perspective: 

INSIDE THE STATEHOUSE: State derives no revenue from gambling despite presence of casinos in Alabama

Posted by: admin(banhammer) Posted date: June 12, 2015

By Steve Flowers

As I was walking out of the Statehouse recently, someone asked me, “Do you think we will have gambling in Alabama?”

My response was simple: “We already have gambling, the state just does not derive any revenue from it.”

Indeed, gambling proliferates in our state just as it does in all of the other 49 states and the District of Columbia. People gamble online prolifically every day. There are no state line boundaries to internet gambling. All of the revenue from that activity goes out of state. Our people play the lottery, they just buy their tickets in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. Our surrounding sister states fund their government and educate their children with our recreational dollars.

Steve Flowers

I hardly go anywhere in the state that I do not hear someone cackle that they are going to Biloxi to the shows at the casinos. Therefore, it did not surprise me when I read that 12 percent of the patrons at the Mississippi casinos were Alabamians. So our recreational gaming dollars are funding Mississippi state government. In fact, Mississippi derives 11 percent of their entire state revenue from gaming dollars.

Alabamians do not even have to go to Mississippi casinos; we have them here. They operate as Indian gambling casinos. These casinos are federally sanctioned. Therefore, the state gets no revenue from these facilities. Only the problems and costs associated with gambling addiction.

The so called Indian gambling establishments in Alabama and around the country were created under a cloud of corruption that ranks as one of the most corrupt scandals in American history. “Casino Jack” Abramoff and his partner Bob Scanlan came to Washington armed with $40 million. They essentially bought and bribed enough congressmen and senators to give these casinos a monopoly. After the legislation was passed, Abramoff and Scanlan pled guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud. They went to jail with 21 other Washington insiders and congressmen. However, the Indian gambling deal is still federal law.

Bob Scanlan worked for Bob Riley when Riley was a congressman. Soon thereafter Riley ran for governor. He received a good amount of his campaign money from these same Indian gambling syndicates. The Indian gambling money that flowed into the Riley campaign is probably the reason he narrowly won the 2002 Governor’s Race.

As payback for them electing him, Riley spend the last two years of his term working to close down Macon County’s VictoryLand. The Indian gambling interests like a monopoly, which is what they have in Alabama.

Gambling dollars are big. The money spent politically is big. That is why it has become the centerpiece of conversation late in this legislative session. Legislators have come to the realization that the beleaguered General Fund is in dire straits. They believe that the good doctor, Gov. Robert Bentley, is right on that point. However, they have not and it appears they will not adopt his $540 million tax package.

The House of Representatives for the first time in four and a half years appears to have become disorganized. They have followed Speaker Mike Hubbard like a flock of sheep. They have been herded like goats. They may have come to the realization that they may be being led like pigs to slaughter.

The leader that has emerged in the first year of the quadrennium is Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh (R-Anniston). He has offered to the senate a constitutional amendment to let the people of Alabama vote on a lottery. Polling shows that it would pass overwhelmingly in a referendum.

However, it has serious political opposition inside the Statehouse and Capitol getting to the people. Gov. Bentley is opposed inexplicably because it raises about the same amount of money for the General Fund as his tax plan. Speaker Hubbard will oppose it in the House if it gets out of the Senate. He is tied inextricably to the Poach Creek gambling money. Therefore, it looks like there are three different trains going down the tracks and folks, that is a recipe for a train wreck.

It looks like a Special Session is in the works. In a Special Session the legislature must focus on the budgets and how to provide the revenue needed for state government to function. A special session is limited to 12 meeting days in 30 calendar days and only items in the governor’s call for the session may be addressed without a two-thirds vote by both chambers. We will see.

See you next week.

Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His weekly column on Alabama politics appears in over 60 Alabama newspapers. He may be reached at www.steveflowers.us.

http://www.trussvilletribune.com/2015/06/12/inside-the-statehouse-state-derives-no-revenue-from-gambling-despite-presence-of-casinos-in-alabama/

How come Gambling = Corruption?

Ford files ethics complaint against attorney general

By: Donathan Prater | Opelika-Auburn News
Published: November 06, 2012 Updated: November 06, 2012 - 6:07 PM

Credit: Cliff Williams Opelika-Auburn News

Tuskegee Mayor Johnny Ford

Hours after being officially sworn to his eighth term as Tuskeagee’s mayor on Monday, Johnny Ford filed an ethics complaint with the U.S. Attorney’s Office against Alabama Attorney Gen. Luther Strange, alleging that Strange has received more than $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions from Porch Creek Indian casinos in Montgomery and Wetumpka.

 

“Now that he is attorney general, he has used his office to try and intimidate, discourage … Victoryland from reopening,” Ford said Tuesday, asking the U.S. Attorney George L. Beck to empanel a grand jury to investigate the matter.

 

Located in Shorter, only a few miles from Tuskegee, VictoryLand casino was closed in 2010 along with Dothan’s Country Crossing after the legality of electronic bingo machines at the facilities was challenged.

 

Ford said his latest complaint against Strange is actually the second he has filed since filing an initial complaint against him with the Alabama State Ethics Commission two weeks ago.

 

Contacted by the Opelika-Auburn News on Tuesday, Joy Patterson, a spokeswoman for Strange, said Strange had not seen Ford’s letter and had no comment.

 

Ford said the type of electronic bingo machines that VictoryLand uses are in compliance with the state’s laws.

 

“No court has voted that those machines are illegal,” Ford said. “The only person who has said they were was (former Gov.) Bob Riley and his task force. Ford said he also has proof of Strange sending letters to providers of such machines, threatening that if they made them available to VictoryLand and other non-Indian gaming facilities in the state, that they would be penalized. Riley, his son, Rob, Birmingham attorney Eric Johnston and state Sen. Bryan Taylor are also named in Ford’s complaint.

Ford, who said he plans to meet with Beck after he’s had a chance to review the letter, predicted VictoryLand will reopen by the end of the year.

 

http://www2.oanow.com/news/2012/nov/06/ford-files-ethics-complaint-against-attorney-gener-ar-4909679/

On tap: Gambling, Part II

On tap: Gambling, Part II

The second round of the gambling corruption trial begins this Monday in Federal Court in Montgomery. Last year’s first trial ended in a victory for all defendants. A jury of 11 women and one man quickly returned not-guilty verdicts on 91 charges and could not reach a unanimous decision on 33 charges. Two defendants, Montgomery Sen. Quinton Ross and lobbyist Bob Geddie, were cleared of all charges. The remaining seven defendants go on trial Monday. The odds favor their acquittal.

In the first trial, the defendants’ lawyers were so confident that the prosecution had failed to make a case that they never even offered any rebuttal testimony. The 91-to-0 score proves that they were correct in their course of action. The federal government spent millions of taxpayer dollars, used every trick in the book, and spent weeks offering testimony and witnesses and still got embarrassed by the decision.

The prosecution asking for another trial is analogous to a football team, which used its best plays and players but still lost 91 to 0, asking for a rematch with the team that dominated them without even using its first string. Furthermore, the odds have even gotten worse for the prosecution. A federal judge ruled that former Gov. Bob Riley must testify. Along with Riley will be his former cabinet members and campaign lieutenant Bill Johnson. Johnson has presented evidence to U.S. attorneys and the FBI and will testify that Riley’s 2002 campaign for governor received $3 million laundered and funneled from the Mississippi Choctaw Indians.

This assertion is pretty much common knowledge. There was some testimony to the same effect during Sen. John McCain’s Indian casino corruption hearings in Washington. The FBI testified that Indian gambling money went to the Alabama governor’s race to inhibit gambling expansion by Alabama entities.

Convicted Indian gambling lobbyist Jack Abramoff, in his recently released book, “Capitol Punishment,” writes that over a five year period the Mississippi Choctaws spent $20 million in Alabama to fight the expansion of gambling in our state. Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon were both convicted in the Indian gambling scam in what has been called the largest corruption scandal in the nation’s history. Scanlon worked for Riley when he was a congressman.

This new trial could develop into a colorful show. Defense attorneys will be able to show jurors that the entire episode and trial are simply politics. Riley was on the side of the Indian gambling interests and fought to preserve their monopoly. Milton McGregor and his Alabama gambling interests wanted to be able to compete with the Indians on a level playing field. Both sides gave money in the form of political contributions to their political allies. Neither side offered personal bribes. Giving campaign contributions to your friends is not illegal. If it were, the feds didn’t have to come all the way to Alabama to indict folks. They could have just walked down the street and indicted all 435 members of Congress.

One of the jurors in the first case granted an interview after the first trial. She is a rural mail carrier in Covington County. She said the federal prosecutor told the jury in his opening statement that wiretapped phone calls and secretly recorded meetings would tell a story of greed and corruption in Alabama but she continued by saying the tapes never lived up to their billing. It just looked like politics. She said from the very beginning when listening to the tapes, “Surely this cannot be all they have. I kept waiting and waiting.”

This trial should be more interesting and entertaining than the last but will probably conclude with the same result.

Alabama: Gilley bought votes

ALABAMA GAMBLING TRIAL

Gilley describes underside of Ala politics

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) A casino developer who pleaded guilty in a vote-buying scheme is describing the underside of Montgomery politics to federal jurors in Alabama's gambling trial.

Country Crossing's Ronnie Gilley testified Friday about giving campaign money to legislators to sway their positions on issues. He says indicted state Senator Harri Ann Smith of Slocomb told him "I'm yours" after he gave her as much as $40,000 in donations.

Gilley says he got millions in loan promises from competitor Milton McGregor and was worried about former Governor Bob Riley listening to his phone calls. Gilley says he and McGregor both used prepaid cell phones so their calls couldn't be traced.

He also says an aide to former Attorney General Troy King advised him to show people in Montgomery "the color of my money."

Legislator: Country Crossing supporters offer more than $200,000 for vote

Legislator: Country Crossing supporters offer more than $200,000 for vote
Written by
Sebastian Kitchen

Former state Rep. Benjamin Lewis, a key government witness who recorded conversations for the FBI in a corruption investigation, went to authorities after he felt Country Crossing developer Ronnie Gilley tried to bribe him with hundreds of thousands of dollars in help for his next campaign during dinner at a Montgomery restaurant.


Lewis and two other legislators attended a March 2009 dinner at Garrett’s restaurant where Gilley and others were promoting Country Crossing, a country-music themed project near Dothan with a bingo pavilion, restaurants and other attractions.


Lewis, a Republican from Houston County, and Gilley got into a heated argument about the project, which would have been funded by electronic gambling.


Lewis said he was asked how much his last campaign cost, which was more than $200,000 in 2006. Gilley and his lobbyist, Jarrod Massey, said there would be more money available for his next campaign.


Lewis said Gilley told him music producer James Stroud, a supporter of the project who was at the dinner and who had been at the State House with Gilley supporting Country Crossing, would write him a check for twice that much.


“I told you the level of support you’ve been getting ain’t a drop into the bucket,” Gilley tells Lewis in a later conversation Lewis secretly recorded. “All we’re asking you to do is give people the opportunity to vote.”


Lewis, who was since appointed a district judge in Houston County by then-Gov. Bob Riley, is on the witness stand for a second day in a government corruption trial alleging that VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor, two sitting state senators, and six others schemed to pass legislation that would help gambling interests in the state if it passed. Gilley and Massey have already pleaded guilty.


Lewis said in court his concerns grew about the comments at the dinner and that he contacted local authorities in Houston County, who put him in touch with the FBI.


An agent asked him to record conversations with Gilley and state Sen. Harri Anne Smith, a defendant in the case who also attended the dinner at Garrett’s.

(Page 2 of 3)

State Sen. Scott Beason, who also recorded conversations with the FBI and roomed with Lewis in Montgomery during legislative sessions, testified that Smith told him following that dinner that Country Crossing supporters could help him with as much as $500,000 for a campaign for lieutenant governor if he supported the project. Lewis said Beason told him about that conversation. He said Beason told him that he was told House members who supported gambling legislation would receive $200,000 to $250,000 for their campaigns with senators receiving $500,000.

Smith, an independent from Slocomb, said that conversation never happened.

Smith, in a phone conversation secretly recorded by Lewis, said she asked Riley on a trip following deadly shootings in Samson in 2009 why he did not help them when they went to him a year earlier trying to stop Country Crossing. Lewis, Smith and local leaders said they went to Riley and then to Attorney General Troy King in 2008 asking for help.

Smith said Riley told her that then-Sen. Charles Bishop, R-Jasper, later came to him with ministers and other people from Walker County asking for help after more gambling operations popped up there. She said Riley told her, as he has told the Montgomery Advertiser, that he then asked a lawyer to look into the legality of so-called electronic bingo.

After looking into it, his staff had a different view from King. Riley then formed a task force which then tried to, through raids or the threat of raids, shut down casinos in the state including Country Crossing and VictoryLand.

Smith said, when she asked Riley about his action now after not helping them, that “he was real shaky on that. His voice quivered.” She said “I didn’t let up … which I wanted to do because I don’t trust him.”

“I don’t trust the governor. I think all this stuff he is doing is a shame,” she told Lewis.

Smith said she had the impression, from her conversation with Riley, that there was a political squabble between Riley and King and that was at the heart of a lot of the issue for him.

(Page 3 of 3)

Smith said she questioned how serious Riley was about the gambling issue. She told him: “Governor the only way I know you are serious is that the first machines you pick up are Milton McGregor’s” who she said was the “800-pound gorilla.”

“If Milton is Illegal, then we will get him,” Smith said Riley told her.

When Lewis asked her in a conversation about whether she thought Gilley and his supporters would seriously help with money for a campaign, Smith said she believed they would follow through.

When Lewis talked to her about the campaign help, she said she would not take it so it could go somewhere else.

Smith told him in the conversation that she believed there would be opposition to her and Lewis and they would lose if they voted against the bill

“I think Ronnie is crooked,” Lewis said in the conversation and said that his camp “would stab you in the back in a heartbeat.”

Smith said she did not believe Gilley would “stab you in the back” if he voted with them.

In the conversation, Smith also told Lewis “I passionately oppose gambling.”
Lewis said he recorded about 20 conversations.

State Sen. Scott Beason, who also recorded conversations with the FBI and roomed with Lewis in Montgomery during legislative sessions, testified that Smith told him following that dinner that Country Crossing supporters could help him with as much as $500,000 for a campaign for lieutenant governor if he supported the project. Lewis said Beason told him about that conversation. He said Beason told him that he was told House members who supported gambling legislation would receive $200,000 to $250,000 for their campaigns with senators receiving $500,000.


Smith, an independent from Slocomb, said that conversation never happened.


Smith, in a phone conversation secretly recorded by Lewis, said she asked Riley on a trip following deadly shootings in Samson in 2009 why he did not help them when they went to him a year earlier trying to stop Country Crossing. Lewis, Smith and local leaders said they went to Riley and then to Attorney General Troy King in 2008 asking for help.


Smith said Riley told her that then-Sen. Charles Bishop, R-Jasper, later came to him with ministers and other people from Walker County asking for help after more gambling operations popped up there. She said Riley told her, as he has told the Montgomery Advertiser, that he then asked a lawyer to look into the legality of so-called electronic bingo.


After looking into it, his staff had a different view from King. Riley then formed a task force which then tried to, through raids or the threat of raids, shut down casinos in the state including Country Crossing and VictoryLand.

Smith said, when she asked Riley about his action now after not helping them, that “he was real shaky on that. His voice quivered.” She said “I didn’t let up … which I wanted to do because I don’t trust him.”

“I don’t trust the governor. I think all this stuff he is doing is a shame,” she told Lewis.

Smith said she had the impression, from her conversation with Riley, that there was a political squabble between Riley and King and that was at the heart of a lot of the issue for him.

Smith said she questioned how serious Riley was about the gambling issue. She told him: “Governor the only way I know you are serious is that the first machines you pick up are Milton McGregor’s” who she said was the “800-pound gorilla.”

“If Milton is Illegal, then we will get him,” Smith said Riley told her.

When Lewis asked her in a conversation about whether she thought Gilley and his supporters would seriously help with money for a campaign, Smith said she believed they would follow through.

When Lewis talked to her about the campaign help, she said she would not take it so it could go somewhere else.

Smith told him in the conversation that she believed there would be opposition to her and Lewis and they would lose if they voted against the bill

“I think Ronnie is crooked,” Lewis said in the conversation and said that his camp “would stab you in the back in a heartbeat.”

Smith said she did not believe Gilley would “stab you in the back” if he voted with them.

In the conversation, Smith also told Lewis “I passionately oppose gambling.”
Lewis said he recorded about 20 conversations.

Gambling Corruption Trial

Nice recap of articles about the issues surrounding the Alabama Gambling Corruption Trial offered by the Montgomery Advertiser:

Gambling Corruption Trial

Weekend hearing set in federal gambling corruption trial

MONTGOMERY, AL (WAFF) - A hearing is set for Saturday afternoon in the federal gambling corruption trial.

The federal judge will hear arguments on the state's motion to quash subpoenas to testify or to limit the scope of discovery.

The hearing is set for two o'clock Saturday afternoon at the Frank Johnson Federal Building in Montgomery.

It will be held a day after opening statements in the case of nine defendants accused of peddling influence on a gambling bill before the state legislature in 2010.

The first witnesses in this case could begin testifying as soon as Monday.


Alabama bingo trial: Attorneys for 4 politicians deny clients solicited or took bribes
By Brendan Kirby, Press-Register Press-Register


Judge sets hearing on whether Gov. Riley must testify in Alabama gambling trial