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Bingo! Alabama gambling dispute heads for a country-style showdown

November 24, 2009 —

Next Tuesday, Country Crossing, a Branson-style entertainment park which some hope will be an economic boon to Alabama’s Wiregrass region, is set to open outside Dothan. It will have a 10,000-seat amphitheater, three restaurants, and the George Jones Possum Holler Bed and Breakfast. It will also have 1,700 electronic bingo machines – and therein lies the makings for a showdown over gambling in Alabama.

Next Tuesday also happens to be the day when district attorneys in the state have been notified they will be expected to comply with a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this month which upheld the closing of an electronic bingo parlor in White Hall by Gov. Bob Riley’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling.

 Eighteen Alabama counties, including Houston, where Country Crossing is located, have ratified constitutional amendments legalizing bingo, but the state successfully argued the electronic machines it has targeted are essentially slot machines, not the church basement and American Legion-style games that were originally intended.

Ronnie Gilley, the developer of Country Crossing, maintains the machines in his park meet the very strict definition of “bingo” set down by the court, and plans to open on schedule. Without the machines, he has said, the park – a $70 million investment – wouldn’t be viable.

Riley, an avowed enemy of the machines, has said that all the electronic bingo machines in the state – even those at Quincy’s 777 Casino and VictoryLand dog-racing track in Shorter, where busloads of gamblers from Atlanta and other out-of-state locations come bearing cash – are illegal. But while he went over the head of Attorney General Troy King to create the task force, a spokesman for Riley said last week it’s King’s responsibility to enforce the ruling.

There’s already a lot of political history behind Country Crossroad, and there promises to be a lot more before this conflict is resolved.

In last year’s 2^nd District congressional Republican Primary, Gilley recruited country singer George Jones to cut a radio ad against Montgomery Republican Jay Love after he claimed his opponent, Harri Anne Smith, had sold out by reversing her position on the project. Love defeated Smith in the primary, but she endorsed his Democratic opponent, Bobby Bright, who won last November.

During the last governor’s race, Riley’s Democratic opponent, Lucy Baxley, raised questions about his connections with Indian gambling. Mike Scanlon, who was Riley’s press secretary when he was in Congress, went on to work as a lobbyist for the Choctaw tribe and was convicted of influence peddling in the same scandal which sent Jack Abramoff to prison, but Riley has adamantly denied taking money from the Indians.

These questions were revived recently when a former Riley Cabinet member, Bill Johnson, charged that Riley took millions in contributions which originated with the Choctaws and speculated this was the reason for his crusade against electronic bingo.

These allegations are "just garbage," Riley's press secretary, Todd Stacy, said Tuesday.

Johnson has taken a lie detector test to back up his claims, and the disagreement recently blossomed into a Facebook feud between Johnson’s wife, Kathy, and Medicaid Commissioner Carol Herrmann-Steckel, who lambasted Johnson for promoting her husband’s campaign while she was still working for Riley as the head of a project to extend broadband coverage in the state.

So far, Riley’s task force has targeted relatively small, cinderblock-building-style bingo operations, noted Bill Perkins, editorial page editor of the Dothan Eagle. Operations like Country Crossing and VictoryLand are another story. In the middle of a deep recession, stopping an operation like Country Crossing, which will employ 500 people the day it opens, with plans to ultimately provide jobs for 1,200, could be politically problematic. Even more so is that the case with VictoryLand, without which Macon County, where it’s located, might well go bankrupt.

“When you get into hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure, there’s going to be a fight,” Perkins said.

While Riley insists the court ruling makes the law clear, he has quarreled with King and the head of the state Christian Coalition, Randy Brinson, over whether it will be enough to prohibit electronic bingo in Indian casinos in the state.

The confusion is in part the result of a byzantine state constitution which allows so many exceptions that it can often be confusing just what is illegal and what isn’t. But Stacy said the law in this case is clear: "You can't play an illegal game on an illegal device."

Riley opposes gambling, Stacy said. But if the state wants to legalize gambling, it should "do it the right way" by passing legislation as Mississippi did, rather than letting it in through the back door.

"The state can't be in the business of choosing which laws to enforce," he said.

Perkins thinks the state ultimately will have to decide whether to share in the take from bingo operations, or shut them down entirely.

“Eventually they are either going to have to say, well, let’s just tax the hell out of them and go with it, or they’re going to say, this was not the intent of these laws and put the kibosh on it,” he said.

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