MISSOURI WATCH: DARKNESS AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Missouri has become the poster state for the nation's gambling industry. Within a relatively brief period of time, Missouri has been transformed into one of the major gambling states in America. Just a few years ago, there was not a generation of Missourians who could clearly remember the bad old days of the 1930s, when illegal games of chance flourished behind closed doors for the benefit of powerful political machines that dealt in every vice known to man, from illegal liquor sales to prostitution to bribery of public officials.

Within the memory of contemporary generations, the state has been transmogrified into a mecca for anyone wanting to lose money, whether by lottery, roulette or slot machines that devour dollars with insatiable appetites for blue-collar salaries and savings. A proposal to expand this confiscation with raffles and sweepstakes is on next month's ballot.

Within this decade, our state has been transformed from a relatively minor gambling venue into one of the five or six states where there are boundless opportunities to win big and lose even bigger. Voters approved casino gambling six years ago next month, and since then the initial conception of historic riverboats cruising up and down our two major rivers has been downgraded to a November 3 referendum on whether non-historic barges crammed to the gills with gaudy lighted slot machines can be permanently moored in backwater gulches.

Ten years ago casino gambling was legal in just Nevada and Atlantic City. Today ther are 40 riverboat casinos operating in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Indiana, and 50 dockside casinos in Louisiana and Mississippi. The conservative Midwest has become the sucker-gambling capital of America.

One of the most amazing facts to emerge from our state's six-year love affair with casinos is that we have no idea whether casinos benefit local economies. The vast majority of us take it for granted that the rather extensive payrolls of gaming companies do contribute to increased retail sales, yet some studies have shown that a majority of the gaming dollars earned or won either make their way back to the casinos or are swallowed up by way of bankruptcy or reduced personal savings. There has certainly been no widespread reduction in local tax levies in jurisdiction where casinos are located.

Not only is Missouri unaware of gains and losses at the local level, the state remains uncertain whether casinos really contribute to its revenue base. A survey by the Council of State Governments reports 12 casino states believe they have gained in overall revenue, nine states say they haven't and eight states, including ours, didn't respond.

To make matters worse, Missouri has not engaged in any assessment of costs versus benefits; only three states have. Nor has Jefferson city answered a myriad of other policy questions concerning how far the state is prepared to go on expanding operations or resisting other temptations that are most certain to appear in the following few years. We need to be deciding such issues as the number of casino licenses, increased regulations, tax rates, credit controls, underage players, expanded treatment for problem gamblers, Indian gaming and Internet gambling. There are other issues relevant to interstate competition and federal-state-tribal relations.

Perhaps most importantly, Missouri should now be asking whether casino operations are making the state's desired purposes and objectives, and particularly, we should be prioritizing those objectives. Is our first concern the raising of additional revenue for the state? Is it to supply extra cash for communities where the casinos are located? Is it to attract more tourists to the state? Is it to provide highly expensive entertainment for home-state bettors?

What is Missouri's principal objective in permitting an activity that was outlawed until a few years ago? We don't know. We think it might be a combination of objectives, but not all of these are equal. At least with a state lottery, we can guess that the principal reason for promising citizens a million-dollar jackpot is to increase the collections of the Department of Revenue, because we certainly have no intention of making every lottery ticket holder an instant millionaire.

We have yet to hear a single state official mention this subject, much less discuss it in any great detail. Indeed, the greatest culpability of the current question of "boats in moats" belongs with state government, since the state officially granted gaming companies the right to establish their operations in 1994, with approval of Senate Bill 740. This measure was passed in full view of all Missourians, some of whom were obviously too busy gambling to notice, but our state officials and the public at large have no such excuse. We watched it happen. When the Missouri Supreme Court ruled last year that the state lacked the power to change the 1992 amendment, there were enough eggs to splatter the faces of almost everyone.

The gaming firms located their moated barges in plain sight, with assurances their plans were approved and legal. The rest of the state, save a few constitutionally savvy judges, believed the same thing. As a result of these assurances, the casinos spent more millions to supplement gambling that had been approved by a majority of those going to the polls six years ago. To penalize gaming companies even more by changing the rules next month would be unfair, even immoral.

The state made the mistake, not the casinos. Unfortunately, the whole process of attempting to transform Missouri into another Las Vegas has been plagued by one mistake after another, continuing right up to this moment. It's bad enough that we're now voting to legalize past mistakes. Shouldn't we begin to assess where we're headed on this issue and start to define both the policies and the rules before we make even more bad decisions in the future?

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.