Vegas Mayor Gambles on Slot Restrictions

What’s next? Banning booze on Bourbon Street? Tossing the bulls off the streets of Pamplona? Or, God forbid, removing roller-bladers from Venice Beach?

Las Vegas is thinking the unthinkable: reining in those “one-armed bandits” and video gaming machines that have become such a ubiquitous force in the city of jackpots and hard luck.

The mayor herself is brokering the idea, naming a panel last week to explore the removal of slot machines from groceries, convenience stores and other neighborhood establishments.

Her concern, Mayor Jan Jones says, is that children can’t even get a Slurpee at a 7-Eleven, and problem gamblers can’t buy a loaf of bread at the corner store, without being bombarded by the lure of clinking coins from rows of video poker and slot machines.

“I’m a big supporter of gaming. Gaming’s been very good to Nevada,” Jones said. “But I don’t think in our neighborhoods it has to affect every aspect of your life.”

Many locals think that Jones’ ideas are nuts, and the mayor admits that the political backlash from the business community--fueled in part by disclosures about her own gaming interests--has been “certainly the most volatile” in her seven-year tenure.

Trying to Protect Sacred Ground

Although her campaign is considered a longshot, it has set off alarms among the slot manufacturers and operators who say the mayor is treading on sacred--and lucrative--ground.

Defeating the idea “is the No. 1 priority for our company. We view it as a matter of survival,” said David D. Johnson, senior vice president at Alliance Gaming Corp., a leading slots manufacturer in the state.

“Gambling is a fact of life here. This is Las Vegas,” Johnson added. “I mean, this is a state where prostitution is still legal in some counties. It’s a quirky state. That’s why some of us moved here.”

The fact that Sin City is even discussing the idea of scaling back its slot machines strikes some scholars as remarkable, underscoring a recent trend in Canada, Australia and parts of the United States to slow the dramatic and often unrestrained expansion of slots in the last decade.

In California earlier this month, Gov. Pete Wilson forged an agreement with a band of Native Americans that could lead to the removal of thousands of slot machines from reservations. In South Carolina, South Dakota and other locales, there has been a “groundswell” of proposals questioning whether gambling should be off-limits in some communities, despite the tremendous amounts of money and tourism it can generate, said University of Nevada-Reno gaming expert William Eadington.

“We’re moving away from the notion that if it’s gambling, it’s got to be good,” agreed fellow gaming expert William N. Thompson at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. “It’s definitely a move forward.”

Don’t try telling Robert Gaskin. The Las Vegas resident calls the idea of restricting slot machines in this burgeoning city “just plain dumb.”

Gaskin’s game is video poker, and he plays it once a week or so when he does his grocery shopping at an Albertson’s store on the eastern outskirts of the city, miles from the Strip’s casino lights and cabaret shows.

With groceries in tow one afternoon last week, the 63-year-old ex-Navy man carefully unseated himself from the scooter he uses because of a disability, nestling up to one of the more than a dozen poker slot machines near the checkout lines.

A handful of other players pursued their pastime nearby. At the next machine, 69-year-old Donna Davis was on a lunch break from her bookkeeping job a mile away. A newly purchased bag of carrots and mushrooms sat in her lap as her fingers darted across the slot’s buttons, signaling which cards she wanted to “hold” and which she would toss out just a moment after they were dealt to her.

“I’ve got a little extra time, so it’s relaxing,” she said, playing as she talked.

Davis had won $600 on a couple of four-of-a-kinds just a few days before, but the cards weren’t so kind this afternoon. “The machine’s stubborn today,” she said, her capital dwindling.

Gaskin’s luck was even worse. He had gotten his disability and pension checks a few days earlier, so he put $10 in the slot machine--a higher stake than usual, he said. After 20 minutes, it was gone.

But Gaskin figures he’s still ahead in his poker sessions--way ahead--and he has this advice for the civic-minded politicians who worry about the slot-playing locals: Back off.

“I don’t know where these politicians get this stuff about people losing money that they should be spending on groceries,” he said. “I buy what I’ve got to have, then I go play.”

Ridding the neighborhoods of slots might help compulsive gamblers a bit, said Carol O’Hare, director of an information service called the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling, but it shouldn’t be seen as a panacea in a city like Las Vegas.

“Eliminating one source will not eliminate the problem gambler,” O’Hare said. “They would merely have to go out of their way to find gambling. Instead of going around the corner, they may have to drive five miles to a casino. . . . They’d find someplace.”

Apart from the casinos and taverns, the city of Las Vegas has 2,465 slot machines in more than 300 businesses--including convenience stores, groceries, drug stores, laundries and even a few car washes and doughnut shops, licensing records show. That represents a 26% increase in the last four years--with the bulk of the growth in convenience stores--as the city’s population has soared.

The slots are everywhere, made popular by the hundreds of millions of dollars generated for business people who secure licenses to run them outside the traditional casinos.

Johnson, of Alliance Gaming, said a single slot machine in a busy grocery can bring in $150 a day in profits for the machine’s owner. Critics, in fact, say the gambling profits are the real reason some stores stay in business, circumventing state laws that are supposed to make the sale of food and other commodities their principal vocation.

Gambling revenues “end up subsidizing these business in which they are placed,” said Eadington, who did an extensive study on the slot industry in 1992. “They’re really not just grocery stores. They’re quasi-casinos.”

Indeed, Mayor Jones said the four grocery stores her family used to own stayed in business for years in large part because of the $1.5 million that their 60 slot machines netted annually.

Still, Jones said she has long been bothered by the city’s inability to strike a better balance between neighborhoods and commerce and “keep [gambling] out of our neighborhoods.” In speeches outside the city, she said, her message is clear: She wants Las Vegas to be seen as “something other than Sin City,” and she is particularly concerned about the numbing effect that the constant exposure to slots has on children.

Critics belittle that argument. In a city where gambling is omnipresent, they say, the removal of a few slot machines at the corner store probably won’t make much of a difference.

“A Vegas kid is a different kid,” said Tim Hager, a teacher in the local school district, as he popped the spare change from a gas purchase into a slot machine at a local 7-Eleven. “His parents are working odd shifts, he sees gambling everywhere and he’s exposed to so many weird things. Pull all the slots and it won’t matter. Las Vegas is what it is.”

But the mayor says it doesn’t have to be that way.

“When you live here, you take [gambling] for granted. But one day you stop and you actually see what’s happening,” she said. “My first concern is the exposure to children, over and over again.”

Jones said it was not until last month that she learned that the city government--and not just the state--might actually have authority to determine where slots are allowed within Las Vegas’ borders.

Conflicting Views of Public Opinions

Soon after, she floated the idea of restricting slot machines--and suffered several quick hits in response.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal disclosed in February that Jones is co-landlord of a mini-mall where two businesses will contain slot machines. The mayor calls the issue “a red herring,” but critics say she is being hypocritical, seeking to restrict neighborhood slots even as she profits from them.

Nine days after that story, the newspaper published a poll that was even more potentially damaging: Nearly two in three residents opposed the mayor’s idea for removing slot machines from city supermarkets and convenience stores.

But an informal sampling requested by the mayor found just the opposite, with 21 neighborhood associations favoring the removal of neighborhood slots and 10 groups opposing the idea. “A silent majority,” Jones calls her supporters.

For now, the mayor has responded to the firestorm with that most time-tested of political coolants: studying the issue.

Her advisory committee is to begin meeting this week, and chairman Michael Rumbolz said he expects the panel to explore the economic and social implications of the slots and to consider a range of options--everything from maintaining the status quo to moving slots to the back of the stores, out of view, or perhaps “outlawing” them altogether.

Skeptics point out that Rumbolz himself heads a major slots operating company in Las Vegas, leading Thompson at UNLV to question whether the mayor intends to “sugarcoat” the findings. But the mayor and Rumbolz both insist the issue will get a full airing.

“Everything is open for discussion,” Rumbolz said. “The mayor has placed the spotlight on this issue, absolutely. And the tremendous growth that Las Vegas has undergone in the last 10 years has certainly made the issue more timely and of greater interest than ever locally.”