Mike Nichols

Let's roll dice again on tavern gambling

By MIKE NICHOLS of the Journal Sentinel staff

Sunday, March 2, 2003

The air is thick with the smell of cigarettes and dark liquors. I put down my Rolling Rock, walk around the end of the bar toward the brightly lighted video machines that appear curiously Vegas-like, and whip out a fiver.

Someone down at the end of the bar -- I think it is the fetching brunet with the winsome smile -- calls out for the bartender to make it possible for me to get a little return on my investment.

From a nearby stool comes a warning, only half-sarcastic I suspect, that I am probably a cop.

But it is easily laughed off.

Now that the governor is in bed with the tribes, about to rake in more money than a croupier with a third hand, the idea of the state busting a joint like this for making a few bucks on the side is funnier than Claude Raines in "Casablanca."

How much longer can anyone be "shocked to find that gambling is going on" in the taverns of Wisconsin?

People drink to forget life's little injustices.

It doesn't always work.

The door to gambling was opened in the 1980s when voters in a statewide referendum approved a lottery. Then we found out -- via a judge by the name of Crabb -- that a lottery is what Bugsy Siegel built in the Nevada desert.

Voters tried to put the genie back in the bottle in 1993 but the results were -- once again -- hardly taken at face value.

Almost 60% voted in a constitutional amendment (one supported by then-Attorney General Jim Doyle) to limit gambling to little stuff like bingo, raffles and pari-mutuel betting, thinking -- in part -- that it might be a way of keeping the reservations from mimicking Reno.

All it really did was give the tribes a monopoly -- one that Doyle, as governor, now finds more fortuitous than a straight flush.

Doyle's new deal wouldn't just open the door to such things as unlimited slot machines, roulette and craps -- it would guarantee the Potawatomi a virtual monopoly on gambling just about anywhere in the state.

"The whole thing is just ridiculous," said the owner of the Washington County bar where I lost my fiver (and also, therefore, any opportunity to see if they actually would have let me collect).

At one point, folks might not have favored gambling in taverns any more than they favored expanding gaming in the tribal casinos.

Now, that sentiment is long gone.

The Washington County Board voted unanimously not long ago to urge the Legislature to legalize video poker machines in local eateries and watering holes, and that was before the governor's new deal with the Potawatomi. Around here, some folks think, cops and deputies pretty much stopped hassling some of the taverns after that -- unless, of course, the issue is forced.

Naming the bar, I decided, would do just that. So I'm not.

There are little signs on most of the machines that still provide a veneer of legality.

"For amusement only," said the one I played.

Hardly anyone's amused.

Harboring a machine isn't a felony anymore, it's true. It is, at most, a $500 forfeiture.

Maybe the new governor, if he can get a minute away from dealing with the tribes, ought to go a step further and ask voters what they think about doing away with the penalties for tavern owners completely -- maybe even get some revenue out of them.

Either that, or do away with the new deals altogether.

I'll bet that's one statewide vote that -- unlike those of the past -- would be hard to misinterpret.

E-mail Mike Nichols at mnichols@journalsentinel.com or call 262- 376-4374.

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