It’s Still Too Early to Leave the Table

By this time next week, Garden Grove city officials may have mucked their hand on the matter of bringing a Las Vegas-style resort to their humble burg. (To those of you not steeped in poker lingo, “to muck” means to throw in your hand and let someone else take the pot.)

Anybody who plays cards knows that sometimes you wait and see how a hand develops. And since City Manager Matt Fertal already decided to ante up by talking to an Indian tribe and Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn about bringing bright lights to Harbor Boulevard, why not see if he’s got a winner?

The naysayers are probably thinking that you can’t go wrong in opposing casino gambling in Orange County. Given the spate of “no” votes a decade ago when a few cities dared to propose card clubs, you can’t blame them. Cypress, Westminster and Stanton shot down card-club proposals, and none of the votes was close. When it came up in Anaheim, council members wouldn’t even put the issue on the agenda.

So why even consider it now?

Because sometimes things change, and I’d suggest that public opinion may have changed about the world of casinos and gambling. I’d point to the well-chronicled poker craze and the phenomenal growth of Las Vegas in recent years.

To that I’d point out that Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, citing the revenue it would generate for law enforcement, supports a November voter initiative that could widen the doorway for casino-style gambling in the state. Baca’s No. 2 man told The Times last year: “Gambling is a legitimate business in the state of California. The people of California have endorsed that.”

The California Teachers Assn., also with an eye to potential revenue, decided at its annual meeting not to take a position on the initiative. Considering that the teachers could have decried it, I’ll take their non-position as somewhat telling.

Garden Grove Mayor Bruce Broadwater doesn’t buy the premise that Orange County attitudes about legalized gambling might have softened in the last 10 years. “I really believe that probably hasn’t changed much,” he said. “I’m still getting notes and calls from people saying, ‘Way to go, Bruce, hang in there.’ The truth is, I’m not vehemently opposed to it [the casino idea], but I don’t see the point of going through the drill.”

He means that Garden Grove residents don’t want a casino, because they connect it to unsavory characters. Harbor Boulevard was dotted with prostitutes and drug dealers, but the city cleaned it up, he said. “I don’t want to do anything that’s a step backward.”

I don’t necessarily buy that connection, but Broadwater’s notion may carry the day.

I was in a mood Thursday to hear more rah-rah from Fertal, but he was out of town. His deputy, Les Jones, who obviously read the opposition to his boss’ comments in the paper, was a bit more circumspect than Fertal.

“Staff works for the council, and the council works for the community,” he said. If the council is of a mind to gauge public reaction to a casino, it could do that, he said.

Jones suggested he and Fertal, encouraged by Wynn’s initial interest, thought the casino idea was a hand worth playing -- at least for a while. But neither would he give me the kind of sales pitch that Fertal offered earlier in the week.

“I was going to basically tell you,” Jones said good-naturedly, “that it’s not a smart move for staff to have an opinion on such things at this point.”

To beat my poker metaphor to death, here’s my suggestion to the Garden Grove council: Why muck your hand now? Nobody’s asking you to throw all your chips into the pot. Why not take a look at another card or two and see if you get lucky?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.