With slot casino bills back before legislative committees over the coming two weeks, Millennium Gaming will unearth its old PR campaign about how great casinos have been for Pennsylvania. Millennium owns local market (NON-destination) casinos in Las Vegas and Pennsylvania and wants to open a slot casino in Salem.

Well, the word about the real Pennsylvania casino experience is now in from a grand jury which spent two years investigating casino regulation there. The PA grand jury's scathing report found that the state's gambling regulator "neglected or wholly ignored" its duty to protect the public from financially-shaky casino operators and from casino operators with organized crime backgrounds, and failed to maximize revenues promised for local property tax relief.

The grand jury was formed under the direction of former Attorney General and now-Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. The full grand jury report is here.

The report also found that the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board:

n  staffed itself with political cronies and failed to recruit and hire qualified staff

n  rushed to award casino licenses to politically-connected applicants

n  blocked board investigators as they attempted to conduct background checks on a politically-connected applicant

n  forced changes to investigative reports to protect the politically-favored

n  failed to hold meetings in public as required by law

The grand jury also found that gambling lobbyists had a heavy influence in writing state gambling laws and singled out several Pennsylvania House and Senate leaders as sources of the political influence over the GCB.

Here is a snip from a PA Independent news story on the report:

The GCB "... was influenced by political leaders from both sides of the aisle in the General Assembly. Those leaders - particularly state Rep. Mike Veon, then-House Minority Leader and former House Speaker Bill DeWeese - regularly sent lists to the GCB of people "recommended" for employment. Veon is serving a six-year prison sentence for public corruption, and DeWeese is under indictment on similar charges. The report also singled out former state Senate President Bob Jubilerer and Senate Minority Leader Bob Mellow for apparently meddling in GCB affairs. Mellow and Jubilerer have since left the Senate, and Mellow is under investigation by the FBI."

In state after state, promises that casino corruption can be prevented are made and then broken. We don't need or want this type of politics in New Hampshire.