Covering gambling debates in Alabama through the years has been one of our most interesting and colorful reporting assignments.
Several staff members have helped with the in-depth research including exposing an improper assessment touted as proof of the positive economic impact of gambling.
The 2015 Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) report was commissioned by Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh and prepared by the university’s Institute for Accountability and Government Efficiency.
It was The Alabama Baptist (TAB) that initially reported how the numbers in the study didn’t add up.
The article was released in May 2015 while Alabama legislators were debating several gambling proposals and later won Alabama Press Association’s FOI — First Amendment Award.
The debunked AUM assessment is only one of many articles and editorials on the harms of gambling published by TAB staff during the past 25 years. TAB has reported on the countless attempts at expanding legalized gambling in the state and the never-ending fight against illegal gambling, and TAB was a major player in the defeat of a statewide lottery in 1999.
If you search for “gambling” on our website (www.thealabamabaptist.org), you will find 6,700 articles. A search for “electronic bingo gambling” shows 1,300 articles, “electronic gambling” brings up 800 articles and “lottery” nearly 1,700.
There’s no shortage of gambling-related research nor reports of court cases confirming that machines looking and acting like slot machines are illegal in Alabama. Calling the machines “bingo” and having a small cartoon bingo card on the screen does not miraculously change the machine from an illegal version.
And yet here we are again with illegal operations popping up — all in hopes this is the year slot machine-style gambling becomes legal.
Media reports indicate the Walker County Sheriff’s Office shut down the newly established operations in its district while the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office so far has not.
Illegal gambling operations in Greene County have operated almost consistently and seemingly without question for at least two decades.
Law enforcers and elected officials can’t seem to agree on what Alabama law actually states even though the state Supreme Court ruled clearly in 2014 that electronic bingo gambling is illegal under state law.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall says his office will go after all illegal operations that local authorities ignore. To report gambling halls in your area, call Marshall’s office at 334-242-7300.
It’s an exhausting battle. Gambling industry leaders are relentless, which indicates there is money to be made — for them, not for the communities they claim to embrace. After all, if the concern were truly about the communities, wouldn’t those same industry leaders be focused on economic development and job opportunities with or without gambling?
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