Like so many others around the state, Alabama Baptist ministers and church leaders in St. Clair County are gearing up to fight electronic bingo gambling. And with their fight comes a new boldness on the part of gambling proponents in the area — a public acknowledgement that the gambling facility owners are truly in it to make money, not to serve as a nonprofit organization to help local charities.
Ashville Mayor Robert McKay advocates allowing the area’s traditional and legal “card” bingo to be played electronically.
While the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that all electronic gambling machines resembling a slot machine at any level are illegal, McKay and others are seeking a city ordinance that “allows” bingo to be played on electronic gambling machines.
If the Ashville ordinance is deemed legal by the St. Clair County Circuit Court in Pell City, Shooting Star Entertainment — a Huntsville-based gambling business already planning to provide the machines for Ashville — will pay $100 per machine per month to the city not including percentages for the county and other entities, according to McKay.
He said this would provide $45,000 per month for Ashville over the first two years and as much as $3 million annually after a larger gambling facility and entertainment complex “like Wind Creek (Casino & Hotel in Atmore)” is opened on “75 acres of prime land on I-59 on the opposite side of Ashville — well out of town.”
Barely 20 miles south of Ashville, Argo residents are fighting a similar battle, while it seems Mayor Paul Jennings and the city council are waiting to see what happens in Ashville before finalizing their decision.
A Mississippi businessman has promised to give $1 million per year in business license fees plus $50,000 to town charities monthly to Argo if he can open a 15-acre electronic bingo gambling complex there.
But Argo resident Phillip Nelson believes this type of contribution is problematic not only because the businessman stands to earn much more than he said he would give Argo but also because of the amount he plans to give the town.
With Argo having an annual budget of about $600,000, “he would control the town by monetary influence alone,” said Nelson, a deacon at First Baptist Church, Pinson, in Birmingham Baptist Association. “Normal people would lose their influence to city government. Priority would be given to the person creating the most wealth.”
McKay has been asked about the same thing happening in Ashville, but he does not believe the gambling facility owners would have too much influence. “It’s just like Wal-Mart,” he said. “This group (Shooting Star Entertainment) is here for the same reason anyone else is here — to make money. They’ve got to get paid for their software and their equipment.”
But if the business owners are mainly interested in making money for themselves, how does that fit into the interpretation of legal charity bingo games in Alabama?
“Bingo is to be operated by a nonprofit organization for charitable, educational or other similar purposes such as scientific, schools, religious, anything that would fit under a 501(c)3 status,” said Eric Johnston, president and general counsel for the Southeast Law Institute in Birmingham, which deals with moral issues affecting public policy in the state. “St. Clair County’s amendment does not permit it to be set up for a profit or business purpose. I think it would be illegal if they pass an ordinance that would allow business purposes to be served. It would be violating the constitutional amendment. Although the amendment gives cities the right to pass ordinances for the operation of bingo, they have to comply with the amendment, and the amendment limits it only to nonprofit purposes.”
St. Clair County Sheriff Terry Surles believes the electronic gambling noted in Ashville’s ordinance is illegal. After he threatened to make arrests if electronic bingo is played in the county, the city of Ashville sued him to obtain a declaratory judgment on the legality of the ordinance. The final hearing is set for Feb. 20 at 9 a.m. in Pell City.
“They are trying to get this stuff legalized,” Surles said. “They are asking to have me put under an injunction to keep me from arresting anyone playing these games until a (state) Supreme Court decision is made.”
Instead of a machine that allows patrons to play bingo games, Surles believes the machines McKay wants to bring to Ashville are “jacked-up slot machines.”
“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.
The mayor also admits that at least one attorney involved in writing the ordinance represents Shooting Star Entertainment.
James Sampley, pastor of First Baptist Church, Ashville, thinks the attempt to apply the ordinance is a “clever way to circumvent the law” and provide illegal gambling.
“I don’t want this in Ashville,” said Sampley, who led a meeting of Baptist leaders Feb. 8 at Friendship Baptist Church, Springville, to discuss ways to fight the effort. “St. Clair County has been known for years and years as a scenic and historic county. I don’t want what’s in Walker County (scores of gambling facilities scattered for miles) to be here.”
It will not be like the “mess in Walker County,” McKay said. 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, he said. Instead, McKay said the plan is to place about 450 machines in the local American Legion hall, which has lost fund-raising money and customers to surrounding electronic gambling establishments.
“Bingo is the only source of fund raising for the American Legion hall,” said McKay, who attends First, Ashville, and is a lifetime member and post financial officer of the Ashville American Legion.
McKay said he was originally uninterested in bringing electronic bingo gambling to the town having been advised that it was illegal, but when he noticed that type of gambling flourishing around the state, he reconsidered.
“It’s not right for everyone around us to be playing electronic bingo, and we can’t,” he said. “They are doing it everywhere, and we are going broke. We want to play.
“I can understand the Baptist point that no gambling is good gambling,” McKay said. “They are supposed to not accept gambling. But, it’s already here, and it’s not going anywhere. In our case here in Ashville, the good this will bring will outweigh any bad that anybody might think of it.”
Sampley disagrees. “This thing has been ruled illegal … but the municipalities keep trying to bring it up,” he said. “I respect the work of the American Legion, but I do not respect what the mayor and city council have done. He (McKay) is trying to move it aside from what the central issue is, and that is that the ordinance that the mayor and city council passed only allows the machines to be housed at the American Legion temporarily. They have plans to build a facility to house 2,500 electronic bingo machines. That’s bringing illegal gambling machines into our county.”
Because of that Sampley and St. Clair Baptist Association Director of Missions Ben Chandler are urging area citizens opposing gambling to pray, write legislators and pack the courtroom Feb. 20.
“It’s your courtroom, not theirs,” Chandler said. “It’s your laws, not theirs. What is Shooting Star doing writing our city ordinances?
“Gambling taxes the poor … destroys relationships, hurts children, makes addicts out of otherwise good people. Gambling destroys businesses, brings in crime and reduces the community’s moral fiber to a frazzle,” he said. “We are trying to protect the families of St. Clair County from the evils of gambling.”
At press time, Baptist leaders in St. Clair Association planned to sponsor a community anti-gambling rally Feb. 16 at Bethel Baptist Church, Moody, and declared the day a time of fasting and praying to seek God’s will in this matter.
“The battle is not ours, it’s the Lord’s,” said Heritage Baptist Church, Pell City, member Donna Ledford. “We should be on His agenda, not ours. … When you want gambling defeated, you call on God and see how He wants to get it done.”
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