Before Circuit Judge Robert Vance ended Walker County’s growing gambling business August 2009, more than 30 metal buildings popped up offering slot machine-style games. Around that time, similar gambling businesses were spreading across the state, but even those fighting to expand gambling in their areas used Walker County as an example of what they did not want to become.
Bucky Rizzo, president of the Walker County Political Accountability Coalition, said this proliferation of gambling was fueled by county officials who did not do their jobs.
“I think the county commission was the key,” said Rizzo, who also hosts a radio show called “The People’s Viewpoint” on WIXI 1360AM in Jasper. “They could have stopped it day one, but they chose not to. Judge Vance made them get involved in the case and said they had the authority to stop it. … Then the sheriff (John Mark Tirey) could have stopped it. The bingo folks were violating the law, and he knew they were violating it. But he took it (the issue) to court, and that allowed these people to be able to carry on for more than two years.”
Rizzo was one of many county residents who united and formed groups to fight against gambling in the area. Still, he explained that they had to fight against the very legislators elected to represent them to get rid of illegal gambling. Two in particular were Rep. Ken Guin, D-Carbon Hill, and Rep. Tommy Sherer, D-Jasper.
Rizzo said Guin and Sherer were offered a resolution explaining that bingo in Walker County is limited to paper games. Although Sen. Charles Bishop, R-Jasper, sponsored it in the Senate, the two representatives would not sponsor it in the House.
“Tommy Sherer stood before us (Rizzo’s group) at the Dora Community Center, and he shed tears and quoted Scripture saying he was against it (gambling) and that he would do what he could to stop it,” Rizzo said. “Then, about six of us went down to Montgomery and confronted Tommy and asked if he was going to introduce Sen. Bishop’s bill. He said no because Ken Guin was going to kill it. Ken Guin was not going to stop it because Sen. Bishop filed ethics charges against Guin because Guin was representing bingo clients (as an attorney), and it would be an ethics violation.”
Today Rizzo said there are still three or four facilities in Walker County operating the same kind of games Vance shut down last August, but county leaders are again turning a “blind eye” to them.
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