Make no mistake: Tim Eyman’s latest brainstorm will dog future generations by unleashing a dramatic expansion of gambling. The fat-city beneficiaries, other than its Mukilteo sponsor, will be loan sharks and psychotherapists. Eyman’s campaign has zilch to do with lowering taxes or with tribal casinos — it’s all about doubling the amount of gambling in Washington.
This "treat us the same" initiative, with its reactive, us-versus-them vitriol, will flood our state with video slot machines. We’ll have slots clanging in restaurants, bowling alleys and bingo halls, and potentially in every neighborhood from Lowell to Ballard.
Imagine Washington state as a nerve center for migraines, under a Vegas veneer!
Gambling is a serious public policy issue and expanding legalized gambling has severe social and economic consequences. Eyman’s gambling-expansion initiative isn’t a grandmas-playing-bingo law. It’s about big-time Las Vegas-style slots. In the process, Eyman is joining hands with massive out-of-state interests that feed on gambling expansion across the country. They’re the honchos financing Eyman’s $3,100-a-week (!) salary and his company of paid signature gatherers.
Legalizing more gambling to pay for government services is terrible public policy because:
A fundamental mission of government is to minimize harm and to serve and protect taxpayers. Government-sponsored gambling does just the opposite — it preys on the vulnerable, it instills false hope and it creates social grief. One of the first lessons of Civics 101 teaches that public policies hold up a mirror to our political values. Firing up the slots at Denny’s or Outback Steakhouse doesn’t appeal to our better angels. We can do better.
We’re all aware that at times our state adopts short-term, patchwork approaches to underwrite (or more often to gut) public services. It’s part of a delay-the-pain mindset that mortgages the education, infrastructure and legacy of future generations. The long-term fallout is a regressive tax system and jerry-rigged schemes that should prompt future generations to ask, "Why didn’t anyone stand up to that guy?"
Each of us bears some responsibility. Each of us bears responsibility whenever we shrink from piping up, or avoid the tough questions, or allow a disgraced but unbowed Tim Eyman and get-rich demagogues like him to set the public agenda.
Washington has reached critical mass on gambling. Legalizing more gambling — especially video slot machines — is bad public policy.
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