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Columnist Jeff German: Internet Venture is Ammo for Casino Foes

LAS VEGAS, Nevada – It didn't take long for gambling's national critics to zero in on the controversy over whether to lend the city's seal to an Internet gambling venture in Australia.

Now that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has bowed out of the fray, most observers believe the proposal, which is being pushed by VegasOne.com, has little chance of passing the City Council later this month.

But that's not stopping the likes of the Rev. Tom Grey, executive director of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, from trying to exploit Goodman's once enthusiastic support.

Grey, an Illinois minister with a grassroots base from coast to coast, is locked in election-year gambling battles in six states.

The Las Vegas brouhaha, he says, has provided him with more ammunition in his anti-gambling crusade around the country.

"If this was a city the casinos were taking care of, it wouldn't be sending the mayor out with a tin cup hustling the Internet," Grey says.

The local debate, he says, is undercutting the casino industry's argument that gambling brings economic stability to a community and that Las Vegas is the blueprint for that success.

In its latest survey, the American Gaming Association, the industry's Washington lobby, describes the casino industry as an "important sector" of the nation's economy.

"The more than 355,000 individuals employed by the industry in 1999 made more than $9.8 billion in wages, and spending by the industry and its employees created approximately 500,000 more jobs nationwide," the survey says.

"In addition, the more than $3 billion in gaming tax revenues paid by the industry to the states and communities where casinos operated provided funding for needed services and programs benefitting young and old alike."

You can imagine the irony Grey sees in that statement when you consider what's happening lately within gaming's model community.

"In a city that has as many casinos as Las Vegas, why are they looking for a quick fix to their problems?" Grey asks.

Before Goodman abandoned the campaign because of a conflict of interest, he was salivating over the VegasOne.com offer of $90 million a year for the use of the city's seal.

Think of what that kind of change could do for the mayor's ambitious plans for downtown redevelopment, or his goal of achieving tax parity with Clark County.

But there's more irony here.

Casino industry leaders, except for maybe the downtown operators, oppose the gambling proposal that supposedly was the brainchild of the king of the quick-buck artists, Stratosphere creator Bob Stupak.

Industry bigwigs understand the pitfalls of putting the Las Vegas brand name on an Internet gambling operation that is illegal in Nevada and the rest of the country.

"It just sounds fishy," says UNLV professor William Thompson, a gaming critic who is siding with the industry on this issue. "It hasn't been (well) thought out."

Thompson believes Goodman now sees the danger of the VegasOne.com proposal and is using Stupak, who claims he's not an investor, as a bailout.

Last week, amid growing criticism, Goodman announced he was withdrawing from the debate because his law firm once represented Stupak in an unrelated matter.

As Thompson sees it, if the mayor truly wanted to continue pursuing the gambling proposal, he could have found a way to eliminate the tenuous association with Stupak as a potential conflict.

AGA President Frank Fahrenkopf, meanwhile, says he's not worried about national fallout from the Internet controversy.

"I think Tom Grey's analysis is consistent with his track record of being wrong," Fahrenkopf says. "I do not think his charges will have any impact on gambling around the country."

Grey, of course, has a different opinion.

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