Compton Leaders Vote Selves New Jobs : Government: Council members create a gaming panel, appoint themselves and fix pay at $250 a meeting. Lawmakers in other cities with gambling have no such arrangement.

Most cities with bingo and card parlors have at least one thing in common: They are content to let a state agency regulate gambling.

Not Compton.

There, City Council members have created a Gaming Commission, appointed themselves commissioners--and added a generous pay raise.

For a total cost to taxpayers of $55,000 a year, council members will meet as commissioners four times a month, 11 months a year. That works out to $250 a meeting, even if no business is on the gaming agenda.

Some City Hall critics have questioned the need for a new commission, citing the state’s role as overseer. Mayor Omar Bradley said he has heard complaints about the council’s new duties and pay. But he insists that with bingo already in the city, and a card casino coming, local leaders need to take control.

“People can question what they choose,” Bradley said. “They can sit at home and eat cake while we need to get up out of bed at midnight and go find out why some woman has passed out in the middle of the bingo floor.”

Compton’s new card casino is not scheduled to open until 1995, but the opening of a new bingo parlor in the city’s Ramada hotel has created a steady flow of questions and concerns, Bradley said. And because the city owns the ballroom where bingo is held six or seven nights a week, council members are expected to have answers, he said.

“Whose responsibility is it to clean the bathrooms? Is it hotel staff or the bingo people? And who cleans the ballroom? These are the questions we’re getting,” Bradley said.

While Bradley admits that most questions could be dealt with on the City Council’s regular agenda, he said no other city deals with bingo during council meetings.

Even Councilwoman Yvonne Arceneaux, the lone council member to vote against the Gaming Commission last month, said she believes a separate government body is needed. Arceneaux opposed the plan, she said, because she wanted its members to be gaming experts, not council members.

While council positions are considered part-time jobs--Bradley teaches English at Lynwood High School--the income for serving as gaming commissioners will boost council salaries to $33,000 a year from $22,000. Council members receive $150 per council meeting, $250 when they meet as the Urban and Community Development Commission, $250 for Gaming Commission sessions and $100 every time they convene as the Public Finance Authority. Each body meets four times a month, except during August. Members are paid for every meeting, whether or not they attend. Council members also receive an auto allowance of $450 per month, or $5,400 a year.

The Gaming Commission will be responsible for reviewing bingo and card club permits and holding public hearings in connection with those reviews. Commissioners will assess whether licenseholders comply with local regulations.

Although the state also grants and reviews card club licenses--conducting extensive background checks on every applicant--it does not do the same for bingo, said Debbie Wiley, manager of the state Gaming Registration Program, the agency that oversees gambling.

Bingo is allowed by state law, as long as all profits go to charity and operators give 1% of gross revenues to the host cities. Licenses are granted by local jurisdictions. In most cities, the City Council and staff handle bingo licensing duties.

Hawaiian Gardens has a larger bingo parlor than Compton’s, grossing more than $20 million a year, but that city does not believe it needs a gaming commission, City Manager Nelson Oliva said.

“The state takes care of that” oversight, he said. “There are laws governing bingo.”

If there are bingo concerns that staff cannot answer, Oliva said, the issues come before the council during regular meetings. The city did not hire extra staff to oversee bingo, he said.

In City of Commerce and Bell Gardens, where card clubs funnel more than $10 million annually into each city’s coffers, the city councils are not involved in monitoring gambling unless a problem arises.

City of Commerce--where a card club brought the city $11.3 million during the last fiscal year--does have a seven-member gaming committee, including two council members and five community appointees, said Tom Bachman, director of finance. But that committee meets quarterly, is unpaid and operates only as an advisory body, Bachman said.

Bell Gardens has no separate committee to oversee the successful Bicycle Club.

A large part of the Compton commission’s duties, Bradley said, will be ensuring that the city receives its share of license fees. Card and bingo clubs pay a percentage of their gross revenue to the city and the commission will keep a close watch on the clubs’ regular audits, he said.

Bradley wants the commission to hire someone to count players and revenues every night. If bingo makes $10 million a year, as officials project, the city expects to receive $100,000 in license fees.

The cost of a new staff person, plus the $55,000 for council members serving as gaming commissioners, will consume most of the license fees generated by the bingo parlor. But Bradley said the commissioners will earn their money.

“I think we should be paid for the work we do,” Bradley said. “We have to hear about it all the time.”