Chicago Sun-Times: Let's pull back casinos' curtain of secrecy

The owners of Illinois' riverboat casinos never miss a trick. You may have read that state lawmakers are tossing around the idea of increasing the taxes on riverboat casinos by some $150 million a year to help fill the hole in the state budget.

This seemed reasonable to many folks since it would come out of the healthy profits of the gambling boats, a state-sanctioned monopoly that has made a lot of insiders richer than anyone imagined.

But the riverboats have countered with a proposal to allow them to add more slot machines, blackjack and poker tables instead, thereby allowing the state to raise about the same amount of money without any of it coming out of the owners' profits. Better than that, the casinos will make even more money than they do now.

The boats are a very powerful lobby, partly because they plow a lot of money into political campaigns.

As a result, their suggestion is making some headway, which leads some in Springfield to think that at the very least there might be some compromise that would allow the casinos to expand in exchange for a smaller tax increase than was originally sought.

You've got to admire their chutzpah.

The state is in a budget crisis, and their first thought is: What do we get out of this?

Which got me to thinking:

Where's mine?

I mean, what do I get out of this deal?

The tax money isn't enough. I want more.

I want disclosure. Total disclosure. Complete public disclosure.

You probably don't realize it, but the Illinois Gaming Board collects a whole lot of information about the riverboats and their owners, although not as much as they should.

The problem is that very little of it is considered public information.

This is not a slap at the Gaming Board, which is required first and foremost to follow the law that created it.

From the start, though, the Riverboat Gambling Act was written to favor the casinos in this regard.

Except for some basic information, practically all the good stuff collected by the Gaming Board is treated as proprietary.

The legislators think the casinos wouldn't want to do business here if they had to give away their secrets.

Just a hunch, but I don't think these companies would abandon their megamillions from Illinois even if the chairmen of the boards were required to provide daily urine samples.

As much as I've enjoyed the way the Gaming Board has put the Rosemont casino proposal through the ringer, it makes me long for a similar hard-nosed approach to have been taken when the original wave of licenses was granted to some of Illinois' biggest robber barons-- I mean, most brilliant businessmen.

Even now, it seems we ought to know with a little greater specificity what information has been turned up on the Emerald Casino group.

My position is that we should know what the Gaming Board knows, and they should know more.

We should know who insures each of the boats and what insurance agents and brokers get a piece of the fees.

They ought to have to tell us who supplies the food and liquor.

I want to know who gets the garbage contract and the private security contract.

Let's have a look at all their consulting agreements and who they rely on for professional services: the lawyers and accountants.

Audited financial statements are made public for many other regulated businesses. Why not the casinos?

If these folks want our permission to make huge profits, we should be allowed to know everything about who they are and how they conduct business.

You think we have scandals now. Just wait until we get a peek at what's actually happening.

After some scandals in the Illinois horseracing industry, applicants for racing dates were required to make public much of the same kind of information I'm talking about for the casinos. I don't think the Racing Board makes them do it any more. It caused too many more scandals.

The way I hear it, the Gaming Board pretty much stumbled onto the fact that the Grand Victoria casino in Elgin was doing business with four allegedly mob-tied companies, which led to the issuance of a $7.2 million fine. The mobsters were involved in providing cigar and vending services to the Grand Victoria.

I wonder what we might stumble onto. I don't think anybody gets fined for doing business with politically connected companies.

As a quasi-law enforcement agency, the Gaming Board isn't going to want to have to turn over the detailed background reports it conducts on license applicants.

That's fine. Just give us all the factual stuff that doesn't come from confidential informants and secret FBI reports, and we'll take it from there.

It would cost a lot of money for the state to license every casino vendor as is done in New Jersey, someone will argue. OK. Just make them disclose and leave it up to the public to figure out the bad apples.

As much as I want mine, I'm more afraid of what other mischief will come to pass if the Legislature even attempts to open the Riverboat Gambling Act for amendments. We could end up with casinos the size of the Super Dome and an explicit requirement that they put one in Rosemont.

Come to think of it. That's probably what the casino lobbyists are thinking. They'll scare us right out of this tax increase.

E-mail: markbrown@suntimes.com