When gambling looks like the best option

Perhaps it's a coincidence that the Catawba Indian Nation renewed its efforts to force our state to authorize high-stakes gambling just as the Cherokees started trying to build political support for a casino in Jasper County. But there's much the same about the two efforts, and the Catawbas' latest lawsuit should remind us that while the battle is over gambling, and we're right to oppose those efforts, there's a much larger issue at play, and our state is on the wrong side.

Gambling interests are in the hunt for suckers. To come throw away their money. To welcome casinos into their communities.

Recently, Hardeeville Mayor Bronco Bostick argued that the Cherokee Indians' proposal to build a casino and hotel, with a promise of 3,800 jobs and a $156 million annual payroll, is just what his struggling town needs to get back on its feet. "Other parts of South Carolina have gotten their share of major economic development announcements," he writes. "Now it's our turn."

My heart goes out to his community. But we don't make policy decisions with our hearts. At least we shouldn't. We make them with our heads.

What our heads tell us is that you don't transform a community by exploiting human weaknesses. That a casino might be good for the casino operators and for the few people who get jobs serving drinks and working the tables, but the impact on the community can be devastating.

That's why politicians and business leaders in the tourist mecca next door in Beaufort County have been less than welcoming. Hilton Head Mayor Drew Laughlin told The Island Packet that "it doesn't sound all that appealing," and the head of the local tourism commission worried that "the businesses that tend to grow up around casinos aren't always wholesome."

Even more telling was Jasper County Administrator Andrew Fulghum's promise that his county had regulations in place to mitigate the proliferation of sexually oriented businesses near the casino. Talk about damning with faint assurance.

What our heads tell us is that it's foolish to believe we can control gambling. We lived through the video-gambling era, when the poker barons, having established a legal foothold in our state through deception, had their way with our courts while they amassed enough money and power to take out a sitting governor and nearly take over our Legislature.

Fortunately, federal law requires Native American tribes to get approval from the governor of any state where they want to open a casino, and Gov. Nikki Haley has the good sense to distinguish between Boeing and Gambling Inc. As her spokesman explained: "She believes South Carolina does not have to settle and that there is a better way."

The casino hawkers in Hardeeville project that 70 percent of the gamblers will come from out of state. If that figure is right - if the casino is as successful as promoters hope it will be in the burgeoning era of internet-gambling - then 30 percent will come from South Carolina. That's 1.3 million South Carolinians they're projecting to shake down every year.

When the Catawbas tried to get state and federal approval to open a giant video-bingo casino in Santee nearly a decade ago, they threatened to open a giant video-poker casino on their York County reservation if we said no. Of course, as our editorial board kept reminding the wavering Legislature and the state Supreme Court ultimately ruled, neither state law nor the treaty the Catawbas signed with the state allowed them to do that. The Cherokees, on the other hand, have no ties to our state and no leverage. Except the promise of jobs to a community in dire need of them.

And that's the common thread. Hardeeville, like Santee, is a poor community that our state has left behind.

Just like the waste industry, which gravitates to Rimini and Hampton County and Colleton County and Lee County, gambling interests prey upon struggling, underdeveloped communities. They target impoverished communities because they figure the local population is either too unsophisticated and politically powerless to stop them or else, as in the case of Hardeeville today and Santee a few years ago, so desperate that they'll welcome even the most undesirable of neighbors.

Two years ago, we ran another guest column from Mayor Bostick, this time arguing for the Legislature to give huge tax incentives to a shopping center that community leaders saw as their salvation. There's nothing wrong with a shopping center, certainly not when compared with a casino, but the idea of taxpayers giving one a leg up on nearby retailers who weren't getting that subsidy was every bit as desperate. We have too many communities whose desperation makes them receptive to the siren's song of gambling.

It's not enough just to say no to the Cherokee casino in Jasper County - just as it wasn't enough just to say no to the Catawba casino in Orangeburg County. Just as it isn't enough to turn a deaf ear to the Catawbas' current claim that unless they up the ante on their little bingo operation the tribe "has no viable operating economic development ventures at present."

It is not only right but in our state's interest to help Hardeeville, and Santee, and the Catawbas, and countless other communities that are dying off as the economy changes, jobs move away and the most talented residents follow them. For too long, we've paid lip service to helping poor, rural communities, while concentrating our money and energy on prospering cities and suburbs.

Really helping those communities starts with transforming an education system that offers better teachers, better courses and a better shot at a good education to wealthier kids in wealthier communities. It continues with an economic development strategy that doesn't treat rural areas as an afterthought.

Haley seems much more interested in promoting rural economic development than her predecessors. That's encouraging, but it's not a particularly high bar, and it's going to take more than happy talk to make a difference. It's going to take smart policy.

The fact that any community would be so desperate as to see a casino as its only hope should send shock waves through our state - and push us to finally get serious about giving our fellow citizens the tools they need to help themselves.