GAMBLING'S FUTURE ACROSS MISSOURI: WATCHING, WAITING

For the past year Missouri has engaged in a ferreting-out process with regard to riverboat gambling. How many gaming licenses will be issued in the state? Which riverboat casinos will be given cruise exemptions and be allowed to remain dockside? Will gambling boats be allowed on bodies of water other than the two rivers designated by the state law? Can casinos compete on the Missouri side of the Mississippi with riverboats operating under more liberal gaming regulations across the river in Illinois?

Such issues reach into Southeast Missouri as well. In Cape Girardeau, Boyd Gaming Co. announced this week that it has put off for a year its application for a gambling license for its planned Cape Girardeau casino. Their decision likely surprised many residents who thought after the issue was approved by voters here, and after voters statewide reconciled games of skill with games of chance, that it would only be a matter of months before a riverboat casino was cruising in the City of Roses.

But no one should be surprised by Boyd Gaming's delay. Disappointed maybe, but few can blame the company for proceeding cautiously in Cape Girardeau when the process to open its Kansas City casino has been so ponderous. Remember, Boyd Gaming was one of the first operators to seek a gambling license in the state. Yet despite the company's stellar reputation in the gambling industry, the approval process has been unbelievably slow.

During the long wait, casinos were given cruise exemptions in Kansas City and St. Louis. Also, developers at the Lake of the Ozarks began a push to get casinos there. And in Scott City, officials are betting against long odds that the Missouri Gaming Commission will allow Lady Luck Gaming Co. to put a riverboat casino development along the Diversion Channel.

All Scott City officials have as assurance that their gamble will pay off is the approval of the board that manages the diversion channel and the promise of a gambling company whose financial condition has deteriorated in Missouri since it developed the plans for Scott City.

Meanwhile, the rising Mississippi River rages through the state at near-record levels, assuring that no development will proceed until floodwaters recede.

Who knows what conundrum will arise next as developers, lawmakers and Missouri residents jockey for the upper hand of less or, alternately, more state regulation of the fledgling industry?

Caruthersville doesn't face such disarray. Casino Aztar already is up and running on the Mississippi in that Bootheel town. Early indications are that admissions are robust. But it is unclear how existing riverboats will be affected as new casinos open across the state and in Illinois.

The fate of riverboat gambling in Missouri remains ambiguous. Neither the most optimistic projections of casino proponents nor the worst-case fears of opponents have been realized, mostly because there has been little development of the gambling industry in the state since the contentious elections.

But Missourians needn't be anxious over riverboat gambling's fate. After all, when voters approved the issue they took a gamble of their own. Unable to peer into the future, voters based their decision on the promises of developers and the objections of gambling opponents. Developers and gambling companies also engaged in a game of chance: Their revenue and admissions figures were little more than calculated guesses with little supporting data in the emerging riverboat gambling market.

Now that some riverboats are operating in the state, actual revenue is far short of the developers' conservative projections. Promised, but so far unapproved, projects are on hold across the state, which is indicative of the industry's predictable transition yet to come.