What others have said about Lakewood and this issue:

2002

June 22, 2002 - Lakewood Mayor Bill Harrison calls plans for two new minicasinos along I-5 “the lesser of two evils”, the other being strip clubs. Harrison states further, “I don’t want Lakewood to be known as the Las Vegas of Pierce County. I don’t think that’s what our citizens want.”i

Note: Five years later, September, 2007, Lakewood would lead the state in the number of card room tables with 90, thus earning the title “the nontribal gambling capital of Washington state”. Only Shoreline, with seven casinos but only 87 licensed tables, comes close. After those is La Center, with four casinos and 60 tables, and Spokane, with five casinos and 59 tables. So if Lakewood’s policy is to discourage the growth of minicasinos, it’s not doing a very good job of it.”ii

July 18, 2002 – City Councilmember Helen McGovern: “I and the council didn’t know that gambling was a problem to Lakewood residents until the article appeared in the TNT (likely a reference to the front page Tacoma News Tribune story of June 22, 2002). I represent the citizens of Lakewood and therefore my personal position (on gambling) has to reflect my constituency.”iii

July 25, 2002 - “The budget crunch forces this avenue (gambling revenue) to make up the shortfall. The council considered gambling a non-issue until recent public outcry. The council did not vote on the gambling-expansion issue. No discussion on gambling took place. A ban on casinos would also end raffle sales, bingo games, etc. and would take likely a minimum of five years to take place. Litigation would likely follow. Citizens will have to say where services will have to be cut.”iv

The Council considered gambling “a non-issue”?

Note: By this time (2002) the Council had already passed four moratoriums on gambling expansion and held four public hearings. Each of the four moratoriums promised a “study” on gambling impact.

Likely available to the Council during this time of “study” there existed the results of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission (established in 1996) whose purpose was stated as follows: “Concerns about gambling’s rapid rise and its economic and social impact on individuals and communities, as well as its corrupting effect on the political process, drew Congressional attention (with the creation, in 1996, of) the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, charged with studying the economic and social effects of legalized gambling in America.”v

Other events preceding McGovern’s “non-issue” 2002 statement:

1999 State of Washington study estimates 8.4% teens with severe gambling problems (presumably this is an annual report given the fact that Lakewood Community Development Director and Assistant City Manager Dave Bugher on July 25, 2007 cites from the 2003 study covering gambling impact statistics for the year 2002)

July, 1999 – Parkland citizens complain; Pierce County bans gambling

October, 1999 – Tacoma City Council bans gambling, providing for 5-year amortization

August 5, 2002 - “Many residents are alarmed at the thought of even more casinos opening up in their city, which has long battled crime and a seedy reputation. But city officials say they can be a terrific source of tax revenue. . . . Lakewood officials also hope casinos will act as economic engines to the neighboring areas along Interstate 5. . . . Not allowing them to open up would cause more troubles than letting them in.

Then Lakewood City Manager Scott Rohlfs: “ ‘If we ban them (casinos), we will be in lawsuits for the longest time. And that is not what we need right now. . . . It’s the state that legalized gambling, not the City of Lakewood.” vi

August 6, 2002 - Question posed to McGovern by Dale Dorman, co-founder of FLAG at ‘City Talk’: “Has the council considered the social impact of gambling upon families in the community?” According to Dorman, “no substantive reply” from McGovern. McGovern indicated that she will possibly hold a forum “run by a moderator so that the public can speak and no one owns the meeting” perhaps at Clover Park or Pierce College. (That forum was never held.)

2003

January 5, 2003 – Pastor Walt Kellcy, First Baptist Church of Lakewood, speaking at the Lakewood Public Hearing on Gambling, at which the signed letters of over 700 residents in Lakewood were presented, petitioning the council to ban casino gambling. An additional 112 signatures gathered from attendees at Lake City Community Church were also presented.

Pastor Kellcy: “I am pastor to approximately 900 people in Lakewood and I can truthfully say that I represent them when I tell you that they and I are opposed to gambling. In addition, you have heard from a number of residents here tonight, all opposed to gambling, and for each one of them there are more in support. And even if they were the only ones, they are the only ones here that cared enough to come – all in opposition. That should be a good enough indicator of the strength of the numbers that are against gambling.”

January 17, 2003 - McGovern stated that litigation by banned casinos would “bankrupt the city.”vii

February, 2003 – Doug Richardson, lone Lakewood City Councilman that “would have preferred establishing a ban, not because he opposes gambling, but because he sees the issue as one of local control. ‘There’s nothing preventing you from putting it directly across from the high school.’”viii

February, 2003 - “I believe your mayor (then Bill Harrison) is not really opposed to gambling and that the moratorium was a façade to placate the public.”ix

February, 2003 - “I don’t think they want to know, frankly” – Lakewood City Councilman Pad Finnigan’s comments regarding why his fellow council members, and City Manager Scott Rohlfs, twice refused to put the gambling issue before the public in the City’s quarterly newsletter in order to survey public opinion on gambling.x

April, 2003 - Citizens Against Gambling Expansion (CAGE) send a statement signed by more than 30 elected officials to the media and legislators opposing expansion of the state Lottery’s keno game entitled “Local officials oppose new state-sponsored numbers game” and, “Cities and counties don’t want ‘keno lounges’ in their jurisdiction”. No council member from Lakewood was listed as joining in the statement although the following were: Jean Burbidge, Mayor of Federal Way; Barbara Skinner, Mayor of Sumner; Barbara Gelman, Pierce County Council; Linda Kochmar, Federal Way City Council; Marilyn Owel, Gig Harbor City Council; and Mike Lonergan, Tacoma City Council, all of whom were among the more proximate-to-Lakewood officials.

July 22, 2003 - Upon the opening of the Grand Central Casino in Lakewood, McGovern remarked, “It’s a legally licensed business in the state of Washington. I don’t mind where the location is. I’m not a person who believes you can legislate morality. We do get a nice chunk of change from them, and they are good neighbors. . .very supportive of the community.”xi

Note: On the very same date of July 22, 2003, the Lakewood City Council was considering an ordinance to control Wet T-shirts, bikini’s and mud-wrestling in local taverns. And the City Council on November 1, 2004 passed Ordinance No. 358 zoning Sexually Oriented Businesses on the basis, in part, that “an improperly operated SOB can constitute a public or moral nuisance” – p.141 (22-pages available).

September 2, 2003 - After warning members of the Lakewood City Council that their non-decision on gambling expansion, in spite of moratoriums, would likely mean further growth of minicasinos without zoning control, Lakewood City Manager Scott Rohlfs sends a letter to the State Gambling Commission protesting the Commission’s proposed research project concerning gambling taxes. Rohlfs feared the Commission would undermine Lakewood’s gambling tax authority thereby reducing revenue for the police department.

Note: In response to a Public Information Request submitted to the City of Lakewood in August, 2007, a copy of this letter was received. For the full text, see in the Appendix.

The concern, expressed by then-City Manager Scott Rohlfs, appears to be less the city’s opposition to uncontrolled sitting of casinos as the impending possibility that the Commission was “seeking to undermine the current system of local gambling taxes.”

2006

December 7, 2006 - “Two months after Tacoma voters clearly stated they don’t want minicasinos in the city, the Canadian corporation that owns the Silver Dollar casinos has asked Lakewood if it wants to hang out together. Tom Dooley, a lobbyist for the group, approached Lakewood City Manager Andrew Neiditz to ask if the city would annex the Tacoma land on the east side of Interstate 5 where one of the casinos was located. Neiditz said he told Dooley that Lakewood, with five licensed casinos, has a moratorium on new ones. Besides, before he mentioned it to the City Council, he’d want to know if Tacoma would forfeit the land, the businesses and the taxes. So Dooley placed a call to Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson to see if he’d want to give away some land so that the Silver Dollar could become part of Lakewood and reopen. Anderson apparently wasn’t interested. He. . .didn’t respond to Dooley’s inquiry.”xii

2007

March 14, 2007 - “The Lakewood Chamber of Commerce supports it (dropping tax rate on mini-casinos to 11 percent from previous sliding-scale of 11 to 20 percent) – its directors said in a letter to the council that the sliding tax was unfair and singled out one industry. Finnigan favors dropping the tax rate on mini-casinos even lower.

Neiditz “proposed eliminating the sliding scale gambling tax and replacing it with a flat tax of 11 percent to make it easier to administer and to predict revenues.”xiii

Note: Compare Neiditz’s statement with that of Tacoma’s Mayor (and gambling opponent) Bill Baarsma who said that the loss of tax revenue from banned casinos “won’t have much affect on the city budget because officials considered it short-term revenue and weren’t counting on it continuing.”xiv

According to the July 2007 issue of “Lakewood Connections” – the city’s publication of happenings throughout our community – City Manager Andrew Neiditz quoted the Army’s top officer of a few years ago as saying “Our values are sacrosanct, but everything else is on the table.” Neiditz then stated, “Our citizens expect and deserve a city government that is ‘value-driven.’” But how can a ‘values-driven’ city government reconcile the following charges by the Tacoma News Tribune: Lakewood is ‘addicted’ (September 24, 2007, B5); and moratoriums “deceptive” (September 24, 2007, B5); “unenforceable” (October 3, 2007, B1); “something of a con game” (September 24, 2007, B5); & “illegal” (September 18, 2007, B1)?

“Consider the irony: Here is the government, essentially breaking the. . .social contract – the agreement by which the people submit to being governed, in trust that those who govern them will act in their benefit. Instead, the government is actively seeking to legitimize a vice that destroys people and wrecks homes. For government to encourage – and even profit by – such self-destructive behavior is, as Kelly puts it, ‘a profound betrayal of every value there ever was’.”xv

March 21, 2007 – “City Councilwoman Helen McGovern said the council imposed the moratorium because the city doesn’t want new gambling establishments in Towne Center or in a neighborhood district, such as Oakbrook. However, she said, existing minicasinos in the city are ‘good stewards’ that deserve a predictable tax rate.

“ ‘The council didn’t want to drive the business out,’ (City Manager Andrew) Neiditz said, ‘but we didn’t want to be the gambling Mecca of the South Sound.’”

“Lakewood has five minicasinos. Another minicasino permitted before the Nov.21, 2005 moratorium is being built.”xvi

There are three problems with the statements above

1. To impose moratoriums to prevent casinos from locating anywhere is, as McGovern knows, “illegal”xvii and, in her own words, “unenforceable.”xviii

“State courts have ruled that cities can make a choice – allow all minicasinos or ban all minicasinos. They can’t pick winners and losers, they can’t zone, they can’t grandfather.”xix

2. It’s a little late to not want to be “the gambling Mecca of the South Sound.”

Then Mayor Bill Harrison said, “I don’t want Lakewood to be known as the Las Vegas of Pierce County. I don’t think that’s what our citizens want.”xx But five years later, September, 2007, Lakewood would lead the state in the number of card room tables with 90, thus earning the title “the nontribal gambling capital of Washington state. Only Shoreline, with seven casinos but only 87 licensed tables, comes close. After those is La Center, with four casinos and 60 tables, and Spokane, with five casinos and 59 tables. So if Lakewood’s policy is to discourage the growth of minicasinos, it’s not doing a very good job of it.”xxi

3. That another minicasino, to make six, was permitted before the Nov.21, 2005 moratorium could very likely be the result of Lakewood having lifted its moratorium allowing a permit to be issued.

Between the expiration of moratoriums (October 5, 2000) and the establishment of a single new moratorium (July 29, 2002) there is nearly a two-year gap (1 year, 10 months) of no activity at all with regards gambling according to a late July, 2007 Public Disclosure Request (see appendix). Once that new moratorium established July 29, 2002 expired the end of January, 2003, there follows once again another near-two-year gap (again 1 year, 10 months – to when a new series of moratoriums/extensions begin on November 21, 2005) of minimal gambling activity of an official nature by the City other than a Council resolution expressing zoning-control concerns to the legislature (Resolution 2002-03 on February 3, 2003). A second Public Disclosure Request was submitted the end of August, 2007 (appendix) to verify that these gaps existed (see also a letter from the city indicated a careful search for all documents requested had been completed).

July 25, 2007 - Lakewood Assistant City Manager and Community Development Director Dave Bugher submitted a lengthy packet to the Planning Advisory Board (PAB) with regards gambling. While four of twelve documents instituting moratoriums on gambling expansion in Lakewood direct the City Staff/PAB to conduct such a study (the first on January 17, 2006), this is the first time such a report has been made. And still the PAB is requesting more timexxii. This phrase “needs more time”, like the phrase “proposes to study”, also occurs twelve times over nine years – in every one of the council’s ordinances/resolutions concerning gambling – a study only recently commenced by the PAB (July, 2007).

September 17, 2007 – Lakewood Mayor Claudia Thomas said, with regards the moratoriums the council has imposed that “the city is fully aware that its moratorium has no legal standing.”xxiii

September 17, 2007 - “Lakewood City Manager Andrew Neiditz said banning gambling outright would take responsible businesses and significant city dollars from a city that has lower property and sales tax revenues than its neighbors. ‘That’s not good now for Lakewood,’ he said.”xxiv

Note: When will it ever be “good now for Lakewood”?

On July 25, 2002, Council member Helen McGovern said, “The budget crunch forces this avenue (gambling revenue) to make up the shortfall.”

On August 5, 2002, then Lakewood City Manager Scott Rohlfs said, “ ‘If we ban them (casinos), we will be in lawsuits for the longest time. And that is not what we need right now. . . It’s the state that legalized gambling, not the City of Lakewood.”xxv

“When does the time come when we’re no longer dependent on this revenue source?” (Councilmember Connie Ladenburg’s question of her fellow Tacoma lawmakers, 2002)xxvi

September 17, 2007 – Bugher, commenting on how the number of minicasinos in Lakewood could double from three to six: “the city allowed the three because they were in the process of building or getting city permits before the moratorium took effect. The city had no choice under state law but to allow them.”

Note: There are two nearly-two-year gaps in the nine-year period of moratoriums where no moratoriums at all were in place in Lakewood. Between the beginning of a series of moratoriums affecting every month between their inception on October 19, 1998 and their expiration on October 5, 2000, and the newest flurry of moratoriums that began on November 21, 2005 to the present, there is a single six-month moratorium that covers the period of July 29, 2002 to the end of January, 2003. On either side of that single moratorium-in-the-middle, there is nearly a two-year gap - 1 year, 10 months - of no activity at all with regards gambling according to a late-July, 2007 Public Disclosure Request - see appendix where there is also a second Public Disclosure Request submitted to verify that in fact these gaps existed.

September 17, 2007 - While McGovern acknowledged the city’s moratoriums as “unenforceable”, she maintained “there’s no urgency to move off the position it (the council) established two years ago. There’s no pressure from a lot of citizens to ban gambling.”xxvii

Note: On March 3, 2003, when the issue was Initiative and Referendum and the setting was the Lakewood City Council’s study session - the complete transcript of which is available - Helen McGovern stated with regards Initiative & Referendum: “I haven’t seen a groundswell of, at least they haven’t contacted me. I’ve had just as many people contact me and say we’re happy with the form of government we have.”

Nevertheless, two years later the council would finally put the matter to the people in the form of an advisory vote and historically, in November, 2005 the privilege to vote on issues that can adversely impact quality of life or violate community values, also known as Initiative & Referendum, passed with 72% of the vote and the Lakewood City Council obligingly signed Initiative and Referendum into law.

“No groundswell”?

On January 5, 2003, at a public hearing on gambling, over 700 letters were presented to the City Council, signed by Lakewood residents, petitioning the council to ban casinos. An additional 112 signatures gathered from attendees at Lake City Community Church were also submitted. One of those speaking that evening was Walt Kellcy, Pastor at First Baptist Church of Lakewood: “I am pastor to approximately 900 people in Lakewood and I can truthfully say that I represent them when I tell you that they and I are opposed to gambling. In addition, you have heard from a number of residents here tonight, all opposed to gambling, and for each one of them there are more in support. And even if they were the only ones, they are the only ones here that cared enough to come – all in opposition. That should be a good enough indicator of the strength of the numbers that are against gambling.”

Why has there been no task force?

In the case of Edmonds Shopping Ctr. Assocs. v. City of Edmonds (June, 2003), the court ruled the city leaders were within their legal right to ban gambling on the basis, in part, that “a conceivable set of facts exist to justify the legislation”, facts determined by “reasonable means”. ‘Reasonable means’ in Edmonds, and sufficient to stand up in a court of law, meant the formation of a task force “to study the question of whether cardrooms should be allowed in Edmonds.” Specifically, “the task force considered three aspects of cardroom gambling: law enforcement concerns, taxes and revenue, and the effects on neighborhoods. That task force considered various studies on these subjects and surveyed members of the community” (p.4 of 13).

Was there a “groundswell” with SOBs?

“During a public hearing held on October 15, 2003, approximately 35 people testified and many written comments were submitted. . . . The comments were overwhelmingly negative and cited citizen perceptions regarding the adverse effects that adult entertainment and SOBs have upon the community, neighborhoods and families exposed to such land uses” (Ordinance 358, p.139).

Twenty-two pages comprise Ordinance 358 regarding SOBs and include references to statistics nation-wide concerning the harmful secondary effects of SOB’s upon communities; findings of a variety of stakeholders including “representatives from businesses, educational institutions, community leaders, and representatives from the adult entertainment industry”; research and study by the Planning Advisory Board cited case law and neighboring city’s ordinances affecting adult entertainment facilities; and the resulting action, based on this research, was to uphold Lakewood’s purpose “to protect, foster and support the goals and ideals of schools, religious and public service organizations serving the Lakewood community.”

But to-date, with regards gambling, the 12-times-oft-repeated-promise to study the issue is only now begun with a July, 2007 presentation by Bugher to the Planning Advisory Board. Up until then, after nine years, nine moratoriums, and six casinos – leading the state in nontribal numbers of tables - there has been no study, no committees, no stakeholder invitations to the table, and no reference to statistics - social or legal, national or local – that clearly exist as much or more for gambling as SOB’s.

 

September 18, 2007 - Lakewood City Councilman John Arbeeny said “Lakewood’s an unfriendly gambling venue.”

But as Lakewood leads the state in the number of card room tables with 90, thus earning the title “the nontribal gambling capital of Washington state”, Peter Callaghan observes, “if Lakewood’s policy is to discourage the growth of minicasinos, it’s not doing a very good job of it. Only Shoreline, with seven casinos but only 87 licensed tables, comes close. After those is La Center, with four casinos and 60 tables, and Spokane, with five casinos and 59 tables.” And since this year (2007) “the council cut the casino tax rate because the casinos asked it to - If that’s unfriendly, what would friendly look like?”xxviii

 

“The council, courageously in my opinion, has withstood some very strong lobbying from the business community.”xxix No, this wasn’t in reference to Lakewood. This is the statement of Jim Roberts, deputy planning director in Redmond, commenting on that city’s refusal to budge to pressure to alter their sign code.

October 3, 2007 – Lakewood City Councilman John Arbeeny said he wants “to get gambling out of Lakewood. We can’t continue to put this off another six months.”xxx

Lakewood City Councilman Ron Cronk “urged the council. . .to ban all gambling and make up the revenue loss by raising taxes or cutting funding for city services. Cronk said the City Council could figure out what it could and couldn’t ban. He said the city should shut out ‘the gambling industry.’ He said studies show that tolerance for gambling creates social costs that are too high. Those include time off work, financial hardships to gamblers’ families and increased crime, according to economist Earl Grinois of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.”xxxi

i Tacoma News Tribune, June 22, 2002, A1

 

ii Tacoma News Tribune, September 18, 2007, B1; Peter Callaghan

 

iii Springbrook Neighborhood Association meeting

 

iv Lakewood Public Library, McGovern representing the city council in a public exchange moderated by Larry Geringer, co-founder of Families in Lakewood Against Gambling (FLAG)

 

v “A Researcher Looks at Gambling”, by Timothy A. Kelly, Ph.D. – Executive Director, National Gambling Impact Study Commission, est.1996; an address delivered to the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling; Nashville, Tennessee, September 28, 2001. Note: The two-year study of gambling’s affect on America was the research of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission which consisted of bipartisan appointments by President Clinton and the Republican Congress. It is also noteworthy “that four of the nine commissioners represented or were endorsed by the gambling industry”.

vi “City could become hub of the South Sound”, Business Examiner, August 5, 2002; p.19; Steve Dunkleberger

vii Tacoma News Tribune, January 17, 2003; B1

viii American Community Journal, Vol.2, No.01, February, 2003, p.2; Ed Kane

ix Email from a council member in a neighboring city to Lakewood; February, 2003

x American Community Journal, Vol.2, No.01, February, 2003, p.2; Ed Kane

xi Tacoma News Tribune, July 22, 2003; D1

xii Tacoma News Tribune, December 7, 2006, B1; Callaghan

xiii “Lakewood considers flat tax on gambling” – Tacoma News Tribune, March 14, 2007, B1; Tucker

xiv Tacoma News Tribune, October 7, 2006, B3; Jason Hagey

xv “Beating the Odds” – an article by Charles Colson & Nancy Pearcey, including a reference to Michael Kelly, Washington Post; published in Christianity Today, January 10, 2000

xvi “Lakewood will limit tax on minicasinos”; Tacoma News Tribune, March 21, 2007, B5; Tucker

xvii Tacoma News Tribune, September 18, 2007, B1

xviii Tacoma News Tribune, September 17, 2007, A1

xix “Lakewood plan for casinos looks pretty friendly” - Tacoma News Tribune, September 18, 2007, B1; Callaghan

xx Tacoma News Tribune, June 22, 2002, A1

xxi Tacoma News Tribune, September 18, 2007, B1; Callaghan

xxii Tacoma News Tribune, September 17, 2007, A1; Tucker

xxiii Tacoma News Tribune September 17, 2007, A1; Tucker

xxiv Tacoma News Tribune, September 17, 2007, A6; Tucker

xxv “City could become hub of the South Sound”, Business Examiner, August 5, 2002; p.19; Steve Dunkleberger

xxvi Tacoma News Tribune, November 17, 2004, B4 Editorial; and November 24, 2002, B1, Callaghan

xxvii Tacoma News Tribune, September 17, 2007, A1; Tucker

xxviii Tacoma News Tribune, September 18, 2007, B1; Callaghan

xxix Tacoma News Tribune, May 16, 2007; Dan Voelpel

xxx Tacoma News Tribune, October 3, 2007, B1; Tucker

xxxi “Minicasinos remain in limbo – Lakewood extends moratorium six months” Tacoma News Tribune, October 3, 2007, B1; Tucker