Indiana gambling interest grows

INDIANAPOLIS -- If you're an unemployed gambling lobbyist from another state, you might look to Indiana to put new roots down.\nRecent history is on your side here, and if you want action, you can find it at the Indiana Statehouse these days.\n"If you step back, you almost have to smile at what has happened in conservative Indiana," said Senate President Pro Tem Robert Garton, R-Columbus. "Gambling is now the growth industry."\nHe's kidding about the smiling. Garton is no fan of how far legalized gambling has come in Indiana.\nAccording to a count by Rep. Eric Turner, R-Marion, there were 108 lobbyists for gambling interests in Indiana last year -- eight more than the 100 members of the Indiana House of Representatives.\nAccording to an Associated Press analysis of new figures from the Indiana Lobby Registration Commission, gambling interests spent more than $2.4 million lobbying the General Assembly last year. That's more than one-tenth of the total recorded tab.\nSince 1988, when Hoosiers changed the Indiana Constitution to legalize gambling and a lottery, there has been no turning back.\nCharity gaming such as bingo was legalized shortly thereafter, as was pari-mutuel horse racing. Then came riverboat gambling in 1993. Then came dockside gambling last year, and now this year, more proposals have life.\nThat is especially so in the Indiana House.\nVirtually everything is still on the table there, from an Orange County casino to charity gaming changes to slot-like machines at horse tracks and off-track betting parlors to legalizing video poker machines in bars.\nDemocratic leaders who control the chamber and its agenda put another proposal on the table themselves. They wrote a provision into their two-year state budget plan that orders the Hoosier Lottery to offer the fast-paced gambling game keno. It would be available in hundreds of bars.\nThey killed it themselves, two days later, because all the fuss it stirred was overshadowing their overall budget plan.\nTheir own party's leader, Democratic Gov. Frank O'Bannon, didn't like it. Neither did many House Republicans, and some House Democrats, who considered it an expansion of gambling.\nBut some other pro-gambling legislation is still alive in the House.\nThe bill to establish a casino in Orange County is before the full House, and is expected to pass. Authorizing slot-like machines at horse racing venues seems likely to reach the floor. Legalizing and regulating video machines in bars is still a question mark.\nThose bills all started in the House Public Policy Committee chaired by Rep. Markt Lytle, D-Madison. He makes no apologies for giving them hearings.\n"It's not a question of whether we have gambling or not, it's a question of whether we continue to allow illegal gambling going on or regulate gambling," Lytle said.\n"I felt like if we discussed the total concept of all gaming, it would allow some of the members to be more educated and have better knowledge before they vote on some of the issues that have been before the House for several years."\nHouse Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, also said that gambling deserves to be debated. Whether this proposal or that passes is up to the General Assembly, whose 150 members are duly elected by 6 million Hoosiers.\n"The judgment call on that is 51 votes in the House and 26 senators," Bauer said.\nNot dealing with it or not debating it does not mean the issues will go away. The "illegal" gambling machines in bars throughout Indiana will continue to exist, Lytle noted, with no take for the state.\n"I don't think we can continue to act like ostriches and put our head in the sand," Lytle said.\nStill, any pro-gambling bill that clears the House is sure to land in hostile territory in the Indiana Senate.\nGarton has strongly suggested that the pull-tab bill, if it passes the House, will see little daylight in the Senate. The video poker bill might meet the same darkness.\nThey might be alive at the end of the session regardless, but by all indications and their words, Garton and Senate Finance Chairman Larry Borst, R-Greenwood, have not softened in their disdain for the gambling movement and their lobbyists.\n"The camel is not only under the tent, the camel is the tent," Garton said. "It has taken over"