Vickey Farmer is in the process of selling her six acres of land beside I-59 near the Pell City exit to a “gaming” enterprise. A St. Clair County resident, Farmer said she was within days of finalizing the deal.
“They (the ‘gaming’ business) came to us,” she said. “They are using the St. Clair County and Pell City school systems as their charity. They will reap great benefits,” she said, noting the money given to the schools will be a percent of the profit made by the business that plans to provide electronic bingo gambling.
But Mayor Robert McKay said she is “idealistic.”
“Everybody can think they can get a permit, but the ordinance (described below) shows how strict the requirements are. There is currently only one permit approved (Shooting Star Entertainment Group LLC).”
Shooting Star — which is one plaintiff in the case of City of Ashville vs. American Legion Post 170; Sheriff Terry Surles; Shooting Star Entertainment Group LLC — has a contract on 75 acres at the corner of I-59 and Highway 231.
The owners of the land (who declined to be identified) said they believed bringing electronic gambling into the county “is good for St. Clair County as a whole.”
One owner said, “This will help the community and bring in jobs.” He confirmed the contract on the land is with Shooting Star, “but everything’s for sell,” he said.
The other owner noted, “The price was good, so we went for it.”
McKay also went for it Dec. 22, 2008, when he presented an ordinance to the Ashville city council allowing electronic bingo gambling.
But the ordinance in question was given to McKay by Matt Abbott, attorney for Shooting Star. It was not requested by the citizens nor recommended by the city council.
McKay said he introduced the ordinance but abstained from voting on it “because of my association with the (American) Legion.” The American Legion is the charity of choice for Shooting Star, which is owned by Wilson Coffman of Madison County. McKay is a lifetime member and post financial officer of the Ashville American Legion. He runs the bingo games at the legion and serves as mayor in a part-time capacity.
City council members voted unanimously to pass the ordinance, which was quickly flagged by Surles, who said he would not allow the electronic games in the county because they would be illegal under current state law and that the ordinance is in violation of that law.
“They are trying to get this stuff legalized,” Surles said of electronic gambling. “My understanding of it is that each time you put money in the machine, then mash a button or pull a lever, you’ve just played an entire game of bingo,” he said, describing the machines as “jacked-up slot machines.”
From there came the lawsuit to determine whether St. Clair County’s constitutional amendment does indeed allow bingo to be played in other forms besides on a paper card.
District Attorney Richard Minor said it does not. “In my opinion, card bingo is what the people of St. Clair County thought they voted on (when they voted to approve a constitutional amendment legalizing charity bingo in the county),” he said.
But McKay said the amendment does not specify. And, using historical definitions of bingo and the 2004 findings from Attorney General Troy King (see www.thealabamabaptist.org), the new city ordinance justifies bingo can be played electronically.
Abbott confirmed he “had a part in writing the ordinance” because “Ashville was interested in having (electronic bingo) and my company and my client were interested in hosting it.”
McKay admitted he had originally been opposed to electronic bingo gambling, even writing a letter on Sept. 8, 2008, “trying to get mechanical bingo destroyed because it was destroying us.”
Noting the number of people who no longer frequented his bingo events, because they chose instead to go to other locations with electronic games, McKay said, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
“Milton McGregor looks like Boss Hogg on the Dukes of Hazard counting his money,” he noted. “I finally decided that they (bingo machines) are legal and we’d better get them or we are going broke. … They (other locations) are operating bingo machines. We need them to.”
Noting “groups of people” approached him “three or four years ago,” McKay said, “I don’t know who they were.”
But it was in early November 2008, then-Birmingham lawyer “John Amari approached me and asked how the bingo was going. … He said we … would be legally able to play,” McKay explained.
“I said the only way I would consider it is that it would be limited and the streets wouldn’t be lined with bingo halls like in Walker County. He (Amari) said that might be obtainable.”
Amari, now Jefferson County district judge, confirmed his 2008 conversation with McKay.
“After that Matt Abbott was the one that really came up with the ordinance,” McKay said. “I talked to the council members and said this could mean a lot of money for the city. Some had reservations on the moral side of it but [saw] where the good would outweigh the bad.”
Coffman gave a presentation to the city council and explained how he would bring in a hotel, restaurants, shops, etc.
Shooting Star will also pay $100 per machine per month to the city of Ashville, McKay said, noting there would be at least 1,500 machines.
The initial reports indicated Shooting Star would be the only facility of this type, that it would start temporarily at the American Legion Post 170 in Ashville while construction on the entertainment complex just off I-59 was built and that the American Legion would be the charity benefiting from this.
The ordinance is a “very well-regulated bill” which makes it “very difficult or practically impossible” to put more than one bingo facility in the area, McKay said.
But Minor disagreed.
“I don’t think the reading of Ashville ordinance limits it to just Shooting Star. Another competitor could legitimately gain a permit by meeting the requirements,” he said.
But all of this is just one part of the issue, Minor added.
If the judge does deem it legal to play the game of bingo electronically, “then we have to determine whether the machines they want to play on are slot machines or electronic bingo machines.”
To read the ordinance and more information about the St. Clair County case, visit www.thealabamabaptist.org.
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