Charitable gambling bill still causes concern among some
NASHVILLE (AP) — Sen. Roy Herron thought he saw a train wreck coming and tried to stop it, even if some of his General Assembly colleagues thought he’d moved past caution into the realm of paranoia.
Herron, D-Dresden, insisted the state’s charitable gambling law had to be airtight or, like a poisonous gas, the cheaters would seep through and abuse the system. The bill under consideration in the Legislature, he contended, did not rise to that standard.
“We’re risking a return to Rocky Top,” he said, referring to the scandal of the late 1980s involving charitable bingo games co-opted by unscrupulous operators. It ended with indictments and even suicide among state officials.
“There’s no oversight or investigation or meaningful enforcement of the law we’re going to adopt,” Herron maintained. “If we’re not doing charitable gambling for charity, then all we’re doing is gambling.”
In the end, Herron managed to get a compromise into the bill Monday night. The compromise allows the secretary of state to charge up to $700 per application and use some of the money to investigate games and enforce the law’s provisions.
The lack of investigative and enforcement authority had been one of Herron’s greatest concerns.
Sponsors and supporters maintained that most charities are legitimate and would abide by the rules, believing the secretary of state could weed out the rest during the application process.
Herron agreed most charities are legitimate, but said he expected the landscape to change as soon as gambling was injected into the mix.
“It’s like a teacher giving a test, walking out of the classroom and expecting no one to cheat,” he said. “Not everybody’s going to be honest.”
Secretary of State Riley Darnell, one of whose predecessors, Gentry Crowell, killed himself amid the Rocky Top investigation, says the bill is much better now than it’s original form.
“Our greatest concern was the third party involvement, professional gamblers that would come in and operate games. That has to a great extent been taken care of,” he said.
Darnell asked that his office be given authority to levy administrative fines, as it can do now for other charitable solicitors.
“Those who remember the Rocky Top period remember they could get any document they needed,” he said. “We would like to have the ability to do more than take this stuff at face value.”
Herron introduced more than two dozen amendments to the bill and tried to get them adopted during last Thursday’s Senate debate. He managed to get one passed that eliminated lottery-type games from being used at charity events; most of the others fell by the wayside.
“I think we ought to thank Senator Herron for making this a better bill,” said Sen. Joe Haynes, D-Goodlettsville, after the vote. “He opened some of our eyes.”
Herron wasn’t entirely happy.
“Is it a better bill than it was? Yes. Is it a good bill for Tennesseans? No,” he said.