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Curt Schroder aims to reinstate gambling industry campaign contribution ban

Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned legislation that banned gambling industry insiders from making campaign contributions. The ruling addressed a semantic flaw in the legislation that had the effect of only excluding “large” contributions from being made, thereby making a complete ban untenable.

The ruling comes at a time when Philadelphians are fighting the city and the state to prevent the installation of two casinos. The fierce debate has mobilized people from all levels of Philadelphia politics, from grassroots protesters to state-level decision makers, and has proven to be one of the more protracted political battles that the city has seen in recent years.

This time, however, the strong reactions were not just from concerned local residents or grassroots activists.

Two state lawmakers, House Gaming Oversight Committee Chairman Curt Schroder (R-Chester) and state Representative Michael O’Brien (D-Philadelphia) have called on Pennsylvania’s politicians to observe a voluntary moratorium on campaign contributions from gambling interests. The two lawmakers are encouraging legislators to observe the moratorium until the legislature passes a new law that will restore the ban, and Schroder has been seeking cosponsors on a bill to do just that.

Schroder and O’Brien, seeing this window as a time when politicians may seize on the opportunity to raise money from new sources, hope to curtail any political contributions from the gambling industry.

In a statement on his Web site, Schroder says he’s shocked by the Supreme Court’s ruling. He called the decision a “truly tortured piece of legal reasoning.”

Responding to the Supreme Court’s reasoning, Schroder said, “In its decision in DePaul v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the court elected to base its decision on introductory language in the act that referred to the danger of large campaign contributions by gaming interests.”

He went on to say, “Because the statutory section of the law prohibited all contributions, the court said the statute violated the preamble. A first year law student would understand the actual statute overrides introductory language.”

Schroder is proposing that Pennsylvania legislators pass a new law that removes the word “large” from the introductory portion of the state’s gaming law.

The ban on campaign contributions was passed as part of the overall legislature that helped establish a limited, regulated gambling industry in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania legislators issued 14 licenses, including seven racing licenses, five slots-only casinos, and two resort-hotel licenses. The ban was an integral feature of the plan and, according to the Act, was designed to “prevent the actual or apparent appearance of corruption that may result from large campaign contributions.”

The lone dissenter in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision, Justice Seamus McCaffrey, had this to say about the bill: “The necessity of the General Assembly to make every effort to take every step to avoid even the appearance of corruption in the highly charged theater of publicly sanctioned ‘gaming’ is apparent.”

He went on to criticize the other justice’s readings, which all focused on the intent of the bill to address only large campaign contributions. “I cannot support such an analysis, one that, I respectfully suggest, flies in the face of a plain reading of the Gaming Act,” said McCaffrey.

The change in the law comes at a time when the Gaming Oversight Committee is working to reconsider how it licenses casinos. It also comes at a time when Gov. Ed Rendell is pushing legislation that could install video poker machines in 14,000 locations to help pay for his College Tuition Assistance Plan.

While Rendell argues that the video poker machines already exist, Schroder says that “Rendell is using the lure of tuition breaks for college students as his means of getting video poker in the Commonwealth, much the same way he used property tax relief to get gambling into Pennsylvania in the first place.”

Schroder also reports being told by some casino representatives that if the video poker law passes, they will sue to regain $50 million that they gave the state in licensing fees, which will work against any supposed relief Pennsylvanians would see in property tax prices.

May 14, 2009 at 3:10 pm

--Kenneth Elder

Tags: Curt Schroder, Gambling, Michael O'Brien, Seamus Mccafrey

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