Cardrooms’ misfortunes felt by small cities
By Justin Runquist, The Columbian, Vancouver, Wash. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
But the closure of
About three-quarters of the city's operating budget comes from its 10 percent tax on gross receipts at card rooms. And that could be a big problem in the coming years, industry officials say, as card rooms are rapidly disappearing across the state and customers continue to flock to tribal casinos instead.
At the peak of the industry in 2005,
The industry entered a downward spiral in 2006 as the state's new smoking ban went into effect, a change that doesn't apply to tribal casinos.
Business has struggled since the reopening, said
Last week, the
"Right now things are very difficult," Fitzwater said. "We're doing our best to be successful in the long term. Certainly, there's no guarantee that the tax break will help."
At 5 percent,
"We don't want to count on that money to be something we would regularly be getting in because we're not sure how reliable that revenue stream's going to be," Laseke said.
The problem for card rooms isn't that people are turning away from casinos, Chiechi said. The market for gambling continues to grow, said Chiechi, whose organization acts as the major legislative advocacy group for
Statewide gaming revenue has increased each year since 1996 with the explosion of much larger tribal casinos, which can offer both a wide range of electronic games and dozens more tables for card games. In that time frame, net gambling receipts for tribal casinos have skyrocketed from
New tribal casino
Meanwhile, card rooms are struggling to keep up with the growing competition. In
The tribe plans to take a 152-acre site into trust to establish a new reservation where the 134,000-square-foot casino would be built. The casino could have as many as 3,000 tribal lottery player stations and 125 gaming tables.
The tribe says it would share some of its revenue to support the surrounding small cities. The project remains tied up in a legal challenge from
In the meantime, Chiechi continues to lobby the state to allow electronic gaming in card rooms.
"We are absolutely in trouble," Chiechi said. "A great percentage of people enjoy gambling as a form of recreation, and yet we just don't have games that draw people to our facilities because we don't have electronic gaming."
Electronic gaming
Chiechi has been pleading that line with
"The public wants a faster game," she said. "They want electronic devices. They want slot machines. They want electronic pull tabs, and we are not authorized to offer those games."
Card room owners have also struggled to keep up with growing labor costs as minimum wage increases each year, said
"See with the machines, they don't get sick, they show up to work on time, you don't have to pay insurance for them, and it's very simple," Newton said. "As long as you have a good preventative maintenance program, the machines will work and work well."
According to financial statements obtained from the
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