Gambling is big business in Greene County, and its supporters have fought tooth and nail to protect it. When Gov. Bob Riley and his Task Force on Illegal Gambling began cracking down on businesses with slot machine-style gambling across Alabama, county leaders organized marches and even threatened violence to prevent state law enforcement officials from shutting down their cash cow.
Still state agents raided the area’s sole gambling business, Greenetrack in Eutaw, on July 1, removing about 900 devices they consider illegal slot machines. So area leaders are continuing their fight in the state and federal court system.
Gambling supporters argue that Greene County’s constitutional amendment, which allows bingo on an “electronic marking machine,” permits any form of bingo gambling county leaders deem acceptable. But the machines do not align with the state Supreme Court’s November 2009 ruling of what legal bingo is (see The Alabama Baptist, Dec. 10) and opponents say the county’s amendment is not much different from the 17 other laws allowing the games of chance in Alabama.
According to Birmingham attorney Eric Johnston, the amendments allowing bingo “are traditionally written to allow limited charity bingo.”
“If it (Greene County’s amendment) were something other than that, we would have opposed it in the Legislature,” he said, referring to the unanimous vote by the Alabama Senate and House of Representatives in 2003. “It was not intended to be slot machine gambling. That is totally made up by their lawyers.”
Dan Ireland, who served as executive director of Alabama Citizens Action Program during that time, said citizens believed they were allowing traditional paper bingo when they voted on the amendment in 2004.
“At that time, nothing was ever said about bingo machines,” he noted. “They (voters) were led to believe that it was just going to be charity bingo.”
Former Sen. Charles Steele, D-Tuscaloosa, who sponsored Senate Bill 9, which became Greene County’s bingo amendment, could not be reached by press time.
Johnston said including the words “electronic marking machine” do not somehow legalize the use of slot machines.
“An electronic marking machine is no different than a dauber or marker you hold in your hand,” he said. “You physically mark your cards electronically. The machine doesn’t do it for you. … It allows you to put your bingo cards on a screen, and you look at them just as if they were paper cards lying in front of you. When they drop the ball or call out the number, you physically mark that particular square, and you do it electronically on the screen in front of you rather than on the piece of paper in front of you. … You still can only play the number of cards that you can mentally and physically keep up with. The machine is not marking the squares through a process that you are not involved in. … That’s what was intended.”
Gambling experts are not certain when Greenetrack began operating the type of machines used in the facility prior to the raid. Greenetrack owner Luther “Nat” Winn did not return repeated calls by press time.
However, Johnston believes the use of slot machines being called electronic bingo expanded after Attorney General Troy King issued a news release in 2004 stating that the kind of machines operated at Greenetrack and VictoryLand in Shorter were legal.
“It cannot be concluded, as some have, that just because the game is being played on video consoles, it is not ‘bingo,’” King wrote. “Just as no one would contend that e-mails are any less a form of correspondence than are letters written with a quill pen but instead represent a technological evolution in correspondence, similarly bingo games that are depicted on a video console can still be bingo — albeit a technologically advanced form of bingo — but bingo nonetheless.”
Johnston also believes gambling proliferated in Greene County and other parts of the state because officials in those areas are “integrally involved with the gamblers” and “have an interest in seeing gambling continue.”
“The (county) commissioners want the employment from gambling,” he said. “They are part of the political machine there that wants to perpetuate gambling even though it’s slot machine gambling that violates our criminal law. It’s just like Phenix City (where illegal gambling led to widespread criminal activity). … Wherever big-time gambling is going on, the city fathers want it. … You’re either with the gamblers or you are not a part of leadership in the community.”
Greene County commissioners and legislators could not be reached by press time.
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