Fiscal Crunch Gives Casino Backers Hope : Gambling: The promise of 10% of the card club’s revenues going to the city could persuade voters to approve the issue, supporters say. The council will decide whether the measure gets on the ballot.

Backers of legalized gambling in West Hollywood hope that two is their lucky number.

Their idea for the Westside’s first card casino, a big loser at the polls in 1990, will make a comeback this year. The City Council is expected to decide Monday whether to put the gambling measure on the ballot. Sponsors have submitted enough signatures to qualify, but the city attorney said the petition is flawed and should be rejected.

The council can vote to put the matter to a vote anyway. It has done so in the past with ballot initiatives that were deemed technically flawed, such as the measure to create a city police force, which was defeated in November.

“I wouldn’t have any objection to putting it on the ballot,” Mayor Babette Lang said. “But I don’t know what the council will do with (City Atty. Michael Jenkins’) report.” Jenkins said the petition was invalid because the signatures were turned in without the proposal’s exact wording attached. Sponsors said that section was mistakenly detached after petitions were signed.

The council may ask sponsors to foot the bill for a special election--an expense likely to exceed $15,000, according to City Manager Paul Brotzman.

The measure is again proposed by a group of investors that owns Cavendish West Hollywood, a private bridge-and-rummy club on Sunset Boulevard. It would allow the owners to move and set up a 99-table club on La Brea Avenue and add pan, a popular card game related to rummy. It bars poker.

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Unlike actual casinos, players would rent seats and bet against one another, not the house. The club would simply provide the cards, dealers and refreshments. A tenth of the gross earnings would go to the city’s general fund. The past proposal earmarked funds for law enforcement, AIDS programs and other social services.

The earlier version was trounced at the polls by a 3-1 margin amid widespread fears that legalized gambling would spawn crime and worsen traffic along the city’s already-clogged streets. The five-member City Council and almost every civic group in town lined up against the initiative.

In hopes of reversing that, the sponsors now have cut the number of proposed tables in half. And this time, they are wagering that the city’s fiscal crunch will make it harder to turn down an estimated $750,000 to $1 million to add to the city coffers in the first year of operation. That’s because the proposal comes at a time when officials are studying cuts in services to cover a projected $400,000 deficit. Promises of even bigger earnings failed to convince many voters in the previous gambling campaign.

“This should be a good shot in the arm to (the city), and it’s not going to cost them anything,” said Jerry Gould, a partner and general manager of the 32-year-old Cavendish club.

While the initiative is again likely to meet stiff resistance, even opponents acknowledge that the specter of recession-induced cutbacks may make a difference.

“The economic climate is different, and that might have an impact this time,” said Councilwoman Abbe Land, an opponent. “I really don’t think it’ll win. If it does win, I think it’ll be because of the economic climate.”

Last month, the cash-strapped Compton City Council approved a controversial card casino, and Inglewood voters in November narrowly approved a card club at the Hollywood Park Race Track after city leaders said it would generate jobs and cash that might help stave off further budget cuts.

West Hollywood casino proponents hope to move the card club to a site on La Brea Avenue on the city’s depressed East End. Club operators want to add pan in an effort to pump fresh blood into a fading business that now includes bridge, hearts and rummy, plus chess and backgammon.

“We’re slowly getting aged out of business. Young people aren’t into cards and games. They’re into the good things like exercise and running,” Gould said.

“We feel it would be a plus for the East End,” said Michael Radcliffe, president of the West Hollywood Community Alliance, a citywide business group. “It’s a business seeking to expand. It’s an opportunity to make money. In this town that’s been hard to do.”

But activist Jeanne Dobrin said legalized gambling would give the city a seedy image and create more problems than it would be worth.

“It brings criminal elements. It brings sadness and hardship to people who are compulsive gamblers. It is against public principles,” Dobrin said.