Poker News

I. Nelson Rose

It took a hurricane destroying Mississippi’s entire Gulf of Mexico gaming industry, but the Legislature finally voted to allow casinos to be build on solid land.

What were they thinking, to not only permit, but actually require casinos to float in a hurricanes zone? Hurricane Camille, in 1969, had flung ocean freighters over Highway 90.

The answer helps explain why the gaming industry is subjected everywhere to bizarre laws that are never imposed on any other business.

It is important to note that like the New Orleans levees that President Bush and Congress failed to reinforce, it was well known that the Gulf casinos could not survive a Category 4 hurricane. Hurricane Katrina was Category 5; with gusts of winds reaching 145 miles per hour. The storm also sent a roaring wall of water 30 feet high from the Gulf of Mexico smashing into the Mississippi coast.

But it wasn’t the shrieking wind and storm surge that destroyed so many casinos. It was bad laws.

The Mississippi Legislature is not entirely to blame. Requiring casinos to float was a political compromise necessary to overcome stiff opposition to legalizing at all.

It is sometimes hard to remember what it was like before state-licensed and tribal casinos popped up in a majority of states, and state lotteries advertised in virtually every major media market.

The under-regulated casinos of Nevada in the 1940s and ’50s were infiltrated by organized crime. Gambling was seen as a dangerous vice. No politician would risk his career by supporting the spread of legal gaming.

The state lotteries helped changed that image because they were so well run, and were promoted as a fun way to avoid raising taxes. Nevada cleaned up its act, under threat of federal intervention. But, still, casinos were not churches. Atlantic City was the first to limit casinos to a single resort city. But it was Iowa lawmakers who hit upon the formula for overcoming public skepticism.

Iowa’s riverboats were sold as merely a means to enhance the state’s tourist industry. Locations were limited to the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, as images of Mark Twain and steamboats were floated through the media. I heard one proponent assert that Davenport, Iowa, would soon have visitors flying in from South America.

To force the industry to make gambling merely an adjunct to tourism, boats were required to cruise for four hours. Of course, operators quickly learned how to slip a few feet from shore and sail at exactly the same speed as the river so the boats stayed in one place. The Iowa State Legislature was the firstto attempt wholesale social engineering.

One of the perceived dangers of legalizing casinos was the potential harm to problem gamblers. So bet limits were set at $5 maximum. This also was designed to discourage Nevada casino companies.

No one thought about what would actually happen when a problem gambler was stuck for hours on a boat with nothing to do but stare at muddy water or gamble.

Other craziness followed. My favorite was “phantom cruises,” where the boats were required to pretend to be on cruises, with locked doors, even though they had never left the dock.

Some Mississippi entrepreneurs and lawmakers saw the potential in riverboat casinos. The Gulf area’s two main businesses, shrimp and timber harvesting, were in trouble. There already were cruises to nowhere, but these sometimes ran into rough seas. Patrons can’t bet very much when they’re busy throwing up.

For decades, Mississippi was known as the poorest state in the nation. Like impoverished Indian tribes, no matter what problems legal gambling brought, the situation could not be worse than it already was.

But fundamentalist Baptists, who oppose all legal gambling, are a powerful political force in the South. The compromise was to isolate the boats and surround them with holy water.

It is interesting to see how little rational thought goes into decisions about legalizing gambling. The only legitimate reason for putting boats on water was to limit access to their casinos, which can be easily done on dry land. Instead, the major argument is that going a few hundred feet inland is an attempt by the casino industry to expand. This ignores the fact that the current law sets no limits. The Mississippi Legislature once again worked out a compromise. Casinos wanted to move 120 feet inland. Lawmakers would let them go only 80 feet, and of course insisted on raising taxes.

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