Casino details hidden - PittsburghLIVE.com: "n Pittsburgh, however, the slots application process is still shrouded in secrecy. The applicants have talked about their proposals, but the state and city refuse to make the details public."
Friday, February 10, 2006
Casino details hidden - PittsburghLIVE.com
All the king's horses and all the king's men, won't be able to fix Pittsburgh again. The secrecy stinks and it is why Pittsburgh still has its "smokey city" image. The smoke isn't from mills full of hard-working men making products for the rest of the world. Today's smoke is from status quo politicians who work hard to hold onto what little power they have for all the wrong reasons.
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Casino details hidden
People have until March 6 to register for a series of public hearings the state Gaming Control Board has scheduled to accept public input on proposed slots casinos.
April 18-19 -- The board will hold hearings at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown, on the proposed slots parlor at The Meadows harness-racing track in Washington County, and three proposals for a Pittsburgh casino.
May 2 -- Public hearing at the Holiday Inn Holidome & Conference Center in Uniontown, Fayette County, on a proposed casino at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort.
May 3 -- A hearing at Hidden Valley Resort will focus on plans for a casino at Seven Springs ski resort in Somerset County.
By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, February 9, 2006
STEVEN ADAMS/tribune-review
Bruce Barron is president of No Dice, a local group opposed to gambling. Public hearings are scheduled to let people comment on the slots proposals, but Barron says, "It is very hard to really express an opinion of something that is not revealed to you."
Opponents of a proposed casino in Gettysburg know something residents of Pittsburgh do not.
People living near the historic Civil War battlefield can see how a casino might impact their community -- or at least how the casino applicant, in a local impact study, said it might.
Adams County commissioners made the document public almost as soon as they received it in late December.
"We're able to see what they're promising and what they left out of their report," said Susan Star Paddock, co-chair of No Casino Gettysburg, which promptly posted the study on its Web site. "If we had not been able to get ours, we would be in a much more vulnerable position."
In Pittsburgh, however, the slots application process is still shrouded in secrecy. The applicants have talked about their proposals, but the state and city refuse to make the details public.
Now the state Gaming Control Board has scheduled a series of public hearings for the spring, asking people to comment on proposals they haven't been able to see.
"This makes absolutely no sense," said Bruce Barron, president of No Dice, a local group opposed to gambling. "It is very hard to really express an opinion of something that is not revealed to you."
Control board members have not said whether they will release detailed information before the March 6 registration deadline or even before the hearings begin April 5 in Gettysburg.
"In all, the board received operator application submissions that contained more than 600 boxes of information," said board spokesman Nick Hays. "To meet its obligations under the applicable laws and policies, the board will conduct a thorough and complete review of these submissions to prevent the inadvertent release of any confidential information."
The secrecy about gambling proposals gets even more complex at the local level.
Each casino applicant was required to file a local impact study with the municipality where it proposed locating a slots parlor. In Pittsburgh, five groups filed reports, although two have since withdrawn.
Mayor Bob O'Connor has not allowed access to the documents, unlike his predecessor, Tom Murphy.
"They'll be public after one of (the applicants) is accepted," said O'Connor spokesman Dick Skrinjar.
Murphy's planning director, Susan Golomb, "was wrong" to let a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter see the files, Skrinjar added. "She shouldn't have done that."
Not even members of the Pittsburgh Gaming Task Force have seen the local impact studies or details about the casino applications, said Ron Porter, co-chair. The group has relied on news reports and public information.
"It's a waiting game for all of us," Porter said. "It becomes a challenge when the community, or anyone, is asked to react ... without having any sense of what the in-depth details of the proposals are."
Adams County Commissioner Lucy Lott, who opposes the Gettysburg casino, said there was no reason to withhold the local impact study there.
"I don't know why it should be secret," she said. "I don't see any reason it should be a document people can't see."
Andrew Conte can be reached at aconte@tribweb.com or (412) 765-2312.
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