Originally published 20 February 2002
in Sacramento Bee
Are legitimate charities losing out?
When
voters legalized charitable bingo in 1976, few envisioned huge, glitzy bingo
halls operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with hundreds of millions
of dollars in cash flowing through them. But that's the reality in many cities
today.
According to the Sacramento Sheriff's Department, the five
big bingo halls that operate in the county bring in about $40 million a year,
virtually all of it in cash. Experts in gambling say that with any business
that operates with that much cash, the potential for money laundering, embezzlement,
skimming and other crimes is huge.
Some of the bingo proceeds go to
legitimate charities, including high school booster clubs, churches, police
athletic leagues. Still, by far the biggest winners are the for-profit businesses
that own and operate the bingo halls and rent them to charities, and the
suppliers who provide the cards, the pull tabs and other bingo equipment.
Even more disappointing, many small bingo operations run by churches and
community charities have been driven out of business by the big bingo halls.
Sen.
Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, complains that the number of charity bingo
operations in Los Angeles has dwindled from 161 to just 38 in recent years.
Polanco has introduced a bill that seeks to give legitimate charities a greater
opportunity to compete in a field that was legalized for their benefit in
the first place. Whether the bill he has authored, SB 832, can do that is
unclear. It is facing powerful opposition from for-profit bingo interests
and is still in flux. Nonetheless, the legislation highlights the loopholes
in the state's gambling laws that legislators need to close.
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