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Bingo! Sunday, Sep 28, 2008 By John Brummett State Sen. David Bisbee of Rogers, term-limited and moderate and brutally candid Republican state senator who probably will soon be the county judge of Benton County, spoke the quote of the year the other day. Well, it's the quote of the year so far. Somebody is going to have to say something pretty spicy between now and Jan. 1 to beat him. He said, "I have found that it's almost always more profitable to be illegal than legal." I do not believe that Bisbee was meaning to say what it sounded a bit like he was saying, which was that he's personally done illegal and legal things and always made more bucks doing the illegal ones. He was saying, I'm sure, that it has been his detached observation - of others, of human behavior generally - that people make more money when not bothering to follow prescribed official regulations or pay for their licenses or ante up for their fees and taxes. This came up at a legislative committee meeting on charitable bingo. For decades we pretended to be against lotteries and gambling while we also pretended that people weren't gambling on a lottery by playing a lottery and calling it bingo. Paying a fee to hold out for B-12 is a low-tech version of a slot machine. You are paying from your perhaps too-meager resources for a little entertainment and the mere random chance to win a transcendent sum of money. Saying bingo is different from gambling is like saying Conway is dry. What happened was that war veterans from around the state, but particularly the Fort Smith area, complained to legislators about the fact that - after voters formally approved charitable bingo two years ago in a constitutional amendment - the state presumed to set up a regulatory process that included an administrative take for the state. These veterans said that this tax had put them at a competitive disadvantage with the casinos across the Oklahoma line. They said they'd earned the right to keep all these bingo proceeds for their nonprofit organization, which helps needy kids and widows. My late daddy was a Marine infantry rifleman on Okinawa. I'm all in favor of our fighting men and women. But I am exasperated that, on the one hand, we hear this extolling of the nobility of bingo proceeds for veterans while, on the other hand, you hear all this angst about how horrible it would be if we had a statewide lottery for college scholarships. I am further exasperated that these noble veterans would publicly call for the state effectively to reinstate an outlaw and unregulated version of bingo, i.e. gambling. Why not reopen Hot Springs illegally while we're at it? The veterans complained that they get penalized for following the law while some rogue bingo outfit makes more money by ignoring the law. Yes, that's true, and it's not right if you work for your money and somebody else comes along and picks your pocket. That's why we make pocket-picking illegal. We don't give everyone permission to pick pockets, though. I must say a good word here for Gov. Mike Beebe. Asked about this bingo issue, he said the voters agreed to legalize charitable bingo and did so with an amendment authorizing state regulation of the newly legal activity. The expense of state regulation of charitable bingo should not take from general taxpayer dollars, the governor said. It should pay for itself from licenses, fees or taxes from the bingo games themselves, or so Beebe pronounce sensibly. But here's what I'm expecting, based our record of consistency in Arkansas: We'll vote down a lottery for college scholarships in November, then legislators will deregulate bingo in the legislative session in January. If that happens, I may just have to drive to Conway for a glass of wine. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
