Lee Stephenson and Henry Coger are right to worry about the proliferation of video slot machine parlors in Hitchcock, where they serve as city commissioners.
It’s a shame they have such little company among others who’ve sworn oaths to serve the public good, including some of their colleagues in municipal government and most of the Texas Legislature.
When it comes to video slot machines, lawmakers have reduced Texas to a fairy-tale land. That is, the government version of reality is something only a dimwitted child could accept as true.
Gambling is illegal, but it’s legal to own video slot machines as long as they are operated as amusements, rather than as gambling devices. That means people are welcome to feed money into them, but all they can hope to win legally are trinkets — rubber lizards, stuffed bunnies, rabbits’ foot key chains and the like. Even those can’t be worth more than $5.
To believe the government version of reality, you must believe:
• There is such huge demand for cheap trinkets that legal video slot arcades are popping up all over the state. So many have opened in Hitchcock that some have begun calling it “The Little Strip.”
• That, because they are in the legal arcade game business, video slot operators are paranoid about who enters their parlors. They install surveillance equipment to watch the doors and electronic locks so they can “buzz” people in after they’ve been inspected and have given the proper code.
Coger said he was asked to leave two video slot parlors when operators found out he was a city commissioner. Stephenson said he was denied entry into six of them. Maybe the Legislature could explain why that never happens at Dave and Buster’s.
• That the medium of exchange in video slot parlors is trinkets, even though you never see trucks unloading trinkets there, or hear about armed robbers making off with trinkets. What you hear about is armed robbers making off with cash, and killing people in their attempts to make off with cash.
The commissioners are pushing for a moratorium on permits for video “game rooms,” while the city develops an ordinance to regulate them. It’s a noble effort, but serves mostly as a reminder that state lawmakers have lacked the guts and simple ethical fiber needed to solve the problem.
The solution is simple: Either make possessing slot machines illegal or make gambling legal, then regulate and tax casinos.
The reason state lawmakers have not done so probably also is simple — money. On the state level, it’s lobbying money going directly into lawmakers’ pockets. But the money motive stands in the way even of local people attempting to do the right thing.
Hitchcock Mayor Anthony Matranga warned against rules that were too restrictive. He estimated the city takes in about $67,000 a year from game room permits and worried that regulating the operations might leave empty buildings in town. The mayor is buying the state fairy tale and perhaps the one that says illegal gambling is a victimless crime.
Here’s the truth:
• If you have video game rooms in your town, you have illegal gambling in your town.
• If you allow illegal gambling in your town, you’re probably sponsoring crime such as drug dealing, prostitution and other racketeering.
Not even the police know who is behind the video slots industry. It could be the same people who bring communities such fine things as crack cocaine and methamphetamine. Gambling dens are fine places to launder money, after all. It could be some other species of organized criminal. It could be none of those.
But to think you can wink and nod at a huge and growing illegal industry and suffer no ill consequences is to believe in fairy tales.
