New developments in DC video slots initiative

Mike Dearborn.

The current issue of the DC good government e-newsletter, themail, starts off with an update on a submitted referendum for video slots in DC. It's not pretty.

From Gary Imhoff:

We haven't written much about the Video Lottery Terminal Gambling Initiative of 2006 in themail, although everything about it is online. In fact, we've written about it only once, when Dorothy noted in the April 5 issue that the first version had been withdrawn, so here's an update. The initiative is designed to force the city to issue a license to run a slots casino to the gambling interests that are sponsoring it.

These are the same gambling interests that were behind the slots initiative in 2004 but, since they have hired a different local agent to be the proponent of their efforts this time, the DC Board of Elections and Ethics treats the two efforts as though they are not connected in any way.

Since early April, the initiative was rewritten to answer the initial concerns expressed by Charlotte Brookins-Hudson, the General Council of the city counsel, and resubmitted to the Board of Elections. The BOEE ruled that it was a proper subject for an initiative, and Dorothy and two Anacostia citizen-activists, Thelma Jones, the president of the Fairlawn Citizens Association, and Anthony Muhammad, the chairman of ANC 8A, appealed that ruling to the Superior Court on three grounds: that the initiative appropriates funds, since it requires the Lottery Board to license and regulate gambling casinos, which forces it to expand significantly; that it concerns administrative matters that cannot be the subject of legislation, since it forces the Lottery Board to issue a license to the initiative's sponsors; and that it attempts to overturn a federal law.

We didn't know it in 2004, and nobody mentioned it then, but the Johnson Act, the federal law that outlaws gambling devices nationwide, has a specific provision that forbids them in the District of Columbia. While states can opt out of the Johnson Act and legalize gambling, the provision that covers DC has no such opt-out option. ...
There are three more long paragraphs that you should read in themail.

Thank you Dorothy Brizill, Thelma Jones, and Anthony Muhammad!

Slot machines at a casino. A report from the American Gaming Association revealed that US residents spent more than four billion dollars last year on Internet gambling, despite a de facto prohibition on such wagering in the United States.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Francisco Leong)

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