9/18/02 -- For Immediate Release
CONTACT: PAT LOONTJER, Executive Director
Gambling with the Good Life
2221 South 141 Court #6
Omaha, NE 68144
Ploontjer@AOL.com
402-551-2776
Supreme Court to Rule on Slot Proposal
“The Supreme Court is holding the future of Nebraska in its hands,” said Gambling with the Good Life Director Pat Loontjer today. “But we have every confidence that the court will uphold the laws and constitution which protect Nebraska’s Good Life.”
“The courts are the appropriate place to stop the kind of deception which the initiative to put slots across Nebraska has embodied from its start,” she said. “We have confidence that after careful consideration, the Supreme Court will conclude that the filing of the video slot initiative proposal was fraudulent and will also find, as District Judge Paul Merritt ruled, that the proposal is in clear violation of the single subject rule of the Nebraska Constitution.”
Loontjer said, “While we support the right of Nebraskans to vote, Nebraskans should not be forced to vote on a multitude of unrelated issues at once. With one vote, the 2,600 word video slot proposal seeks, among other things, to put a virtually unlimited number of slot machines in the bars and restaurants of Nebraska’s towns and neighborhoods, to authorize school vouchers, to mandate where gambling revenues can go, to create a new governmental structure independent of any current elected offices, and to limit the taxing authority of the legislature. To suppose that all of these provisions are relevant to putting slots across Nebraska would, as Judge Merritt found in his ruling, ‘render the single subject rule a nullity.’”
She continued, “Even the proponents have not treated their own petition as a single subject, initially promoting it as a ‘lower taxes’ initiative and now claiming it’s a ‘local option’ initiative—while strenuously avoiding calling it what it is: the most destructive gambling expansion ever proposed for Nebraska.”
Nebraskans do not want more gambling. The petition effort spent nearly half a million dollars, hid their gambling expansion purpose, and still got only 127,000 Nebraska voters to sign on for “lower taxes”—in a state outraged by recent legislative tax increases. The signatures gathered offer no mandate for expanded gambling in Nebraska.
“The truth needs to be told,” declared Loontjer, “and the truth is that this insidious, self-serving proposal appeared because of the efforts of the one man who would benefit most if it is passed, Paul Schumacher, Columbus attorney and head of Lotto Nebraska. The recent trial revealed that he was a principal author and financial supporter of the initiative effort, bringing in the ‘Committee for Local Option Gaming’ as a front group at the last minute.”
Schumacher wrote the proposal so that his company, Community Lottery
Systems, which currently coordinates keno efforts for 72 Nebraska communities,
would likely reap a financial windfall as coordinator of slot operations across
most of the state. “He was even
audacious enough to propose that the Nebraska Constitution provide gambling
operators an exemption from state taxes AND a guarantee of 50% of the
profits—two more subjects violating the single subject rule and hidden away in
the small print,” said Loontjer.
America is turning its back on the arguments of self-serving gambling promoters. Since 9-11-01, twelve states—Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island have said “no” to gambling expansion efforts.
Gambling with the Good Life has successfully opposed a multitude of gambling expansion proposals in Nebraska since its formation in 1995. The evidence is clear that gambling expansion brings with it significant negative side effects which quickly overwhelm any benefits it may promise. The idea of slots in every back yard is so bad that the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, commissioned by the U.S. Congress and president, called on states to “cease and roll back” such operations in its final report in 1999. Bringing slots into neighborhoods provides no economic development, drains local economies, and creates the highest potential for addiction in local communities.
“In this fight and in those to come in the future,” Loontjer concluded, “we welcome the support of all those who value Nebraska’s Good Life and believe it is worth defending.” More information can be found at www.gamblingwiththegoodlife.com.
# # #