Card Clubs Are Sure Losers for County : Cypress, Stanton and Garden Grove Voters Shouldn’t Gamble on Such Risky Business

Gamblers seeking to open up card clubs and casinos keep coming back to cities in western Orange County as predictably as the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano each year.

They wait until city councils start to panic, looking at the shortfall between how much income they need for the new budget and how little they will receive. Then the gamblers appear with the promise of easy money.

They’re back again, this year trying to get Cypress, Stanton and Garden Grove to let them set up their card tables, dangling potential income figures like $12 million a year. Until now city councils have been too wise to get lured into the game, realizing that the city, despite raking in some chips, would still come out a loser. The odds of that happening haven’t changed. But it seems that some municipal resistance has.

Stanton rejected the gaming offers in 1987 and 1981. It wasn’t so decisive this year. Instead, the City Council put the issue on the ballot June 8 to let residents decide whether the city will have gambling at card clubs. No one on the council has offered to write a ballot argument favoring opening the city to gambling. But they set the election in which gambling interests can be expected to put up big bucks to win a “yes” vote.

The Cypress City Council also set the issue for a June 8 election. And Garden Grove is considering a proposal for a card club there.

Garden Grove should say “no.” And voters in Cypress and Stanton should do the same, as their city councils should have done in the first place.

In Cypress, Los Alamitos Race Course owner Lloyd Arnold, who wants to build a card club at the track, says it could bring the city $12 million a year--along with more police officers, a city Fire Department and 2,500 jobs. The problem, as past studies indicate, is that the city will need those extra officers because it could cost the city as much to police and monitor the card clubs as the revenue they would produce.

And police, with good reason, fear the increased crime that gambling so often brings. They have consistently opposed card clubs, and still do.

Westminster, which has rejected flatly previous card club proposals, has adopted a resolution opposing gambling establishments anywhere in Orange County and is seeking the support of all the cities to keep gambling out. It’s a worthy effort. Card clubs, no matter where they are located, are bad for the entire county. When gamblers ask for one, the countywide answer should be: “No deal.”