Controversy in the Cards

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission has just opened for business and remains some distance from drawing conclusions. Its deadline, after all, is still some two years hence. But that has not stopped a phalanx of critics from condemning its membership and dismissing its mandate as a farce undeserving of attention. They do protest too much.

This is the commission that many Americans demanded not so long ago to explore the relationship between gambling and crime and to assess the $500-billion gambling industry’s impact on state and local economies as well as on individuals and families. And politics.

Support was plentiful enough to roll the idea through Congress (in an election year) and under the pen of President Clinton last summer. Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) were each authorized to select three of the commission’s nine members. And what they are said to have wrought, separately or in collusion, is enough to make any conspiracy theorist salivate.

Ask the gambling industry and its supporters and one of the things you’ll hear is that the commission is the creation of hypocritical moralists and is stacked with five anti-gambling members. Ask those who fear that legalized gambling is out of control and you’ll hear that Clinton, Lott and Gingrich’s choices clearly favor the gambling interests. Meanwhile, horse and dog track gaming officials bemoan a supposed dearth of influence from their quarter. Legislators from states that operate lotteries can’t believe that one of their own didn’t make the final cut.

Outsiders say the commission members won’t budge an inch from entrenched views and that the odds are they won’t come up with anything remotely impartial.

But what politically appointed commission isn’t stacked in a variety of ways? In fact, panels with heavily opinionated members often provide the most thoughtful and useful analyses.

The mission of the federal panel is and will remain important. Gambling revenues have helped restore the coffers of struggling cities and towns, brought Indian tribes out of extreme poverty and dependence and helped restore education funding, to name just a few of the benefits.

But there are costs as well, such as the secondary effect on the local economy when many dollars are diverted to wagering. There are also growing numbers of personal financial tragedies involving operators who are all too willing to offer easy credit that can send some poor soul to the brink of bankruptcy and beyond.

The naysayers on all sides should not only allow the commission to do its work but welcome and assist its efforts. A panel charged with assessing the tragedies of out-of-control gamblers and analyzing the industry’s positive and negative impacts on state, local and tribal economies should get all the help it needs.