“United” county board a nice gesture, but it comes down to political rhetoric

After spending the summer months watching the Cook County Board engage in purely political actions against each other, it was nice to read about how the county board was united Tuesday – even though their ultimate motivation is the same, hoping to score points on some future Election Day.

The issue of concern this time was video poker – those machines that until earlier this year were illegal and were often the focus of raids by county sheriffs across the state – eager to show they were doing something to get tough on crime.

AS PART OF its grand solution to resolve the state government’s financial problems, the General Assembly and Gov. Pat Quinn approved a new law making them legal, and imposing a series of taxes on the money made off the machines.

The only problem is that the very concept of legalizing video poker machines in all those taverns and private clubs across the state so offends so many locals that they’re going through the motions of banning the devices within their jurisdictions.

For the record, state officials say the machines will be legal in enough places (ones without pseudo-moralistic hang-ups) that there will still be significant tax revenue.

But Cook County government these days is not one of those places. That is what led the county board on Tuesday to pass a measure that specifies the devices remain illegal in the county – regardless of what the state law says.

NOW AS I have written before, this move isn’t going to make a great difference – because it only allows the county sheriff to take action in those portions of the county that do not fall under anyone else’s law enforcement jurisdiction.

In short, the unincorporated areas.

Since by the very definition of urban the bulk of the 5 million-plus people who live in Cook County live in actual cities, towns or villages, it is a small percentage of the county’s residents who will have to deal with the new ban.

To seriously impact the state’s ability to make video poker legal in Cook County, people who want it to remain outlawed would have to go around to all 129 municipalities in Cook County.

THAT MEANS CHICAGO and the 128 suburban towns based within the county.

That’s a lot of work, and one might very well find out that there are many local government officials who are not going to get bent out of shape over this issue. They’d just as soon not be bothered with it, perhaps because the realities of their local political organizations means that they have no significant competition come the next Election Day – or any future Election Day, for that matter.

Saying that Cook County is reaffirming its ban on video poker sounds much more impressive, even though that ban will impact very few of its residents.

That, very likely, was the reason that proponents of video poker took seriously the Cook County action.

THE ILLLINOIS COIN Machine Operators’ Association organized a throng of t-shirt-wearing protesters, all of whom tried to cram their way into the county board room to express their opposition to the county’s proposed action.

The Chicago Tribune reports that some of those protesters were turned away due to fire codes that limit how many people can be in the board room at once. Considering how small that facility truly is, it doesn’t surprise me in the least to learn that even the slightest crowd can push the county board to the limit.

Of course, none of these people was openly saying that they want more opportunities to gamble. That would be gauche. They tried to spin the issue as one of job creation, which in today’s times of economic struggle has the potential to catch the attention of political people who have a desire to get re-elected.

Do they really want to be the subject material of a campaign advertisement a few months from now funded by the association that says county board members voted to do away with jobs at a time when so many people were out of work.

YES, THAT LINE is ridiculous. It’s absurd. Yet it is exactly the kind of rhetoric that often gets used in campaign ads. The next time you hear a hard-hitting ad against a candidate, you might want to remember this moment and consider that maybe what you’re hearing is a tad bit exaggerated (if not outright falsified).

Instead, we have the county board banding together (after months of splitting apart over the sales tax issue) in a show of moralistic outrage that the state would even think of bringing down the flaws of video poker and gambling upon us, just to make a few extra bucks.

That line is equally as absurd as the claim that the county board is doing away with jobs.

But if there is one thing I have picked up on during my time as a reporter-type person, it’s that I often can watch a government official take some sort of innocuous action and try to figure out how it can be distorted into something that sounds like it borders upon a criminal act.

BEING ABLE TO do that makes it possible for me to figure out very quickly when the negative campaign ads start (probably sometime in January, for the Feb. 2 primary elections) how many of them are just ridiculous, and ought to be disregarded.

It also means I can appreciate that this vote on Tuesday wasn’t so much about impacting video poker (like I said, it would take the actual municipalities to do that) as much as it was about creating a moment that could be used by county board members to inspire a positive campaign ad about how wonderful our sitting county board members were.

Either way, it ought to be a lesson. Political rhetoric is often like junk food – fatty, starchy, filling in a bloated (rather than nutritional) way and ultimately best consumed in moderation.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Now if more towns would follow the lead of Naperville (out in the Land of DuPage), then there might (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/10/naperville-prohibits-video-gaming.html) be some impact in terms of eliminating video poker.

Quinn OK with video poker ban waivers

Gov. Pat Quinn might have the right idea by not getting all worked up over the thought that some of the largest counties in Illinois want to exempt themselves from the new state law that makes video poker legal.

The laws that made video poker a source of occasional raids by assorted sheriff’s across the state (all of whom wanted some attention for their tough-on-crime attitudes by smashing up a few poker machines) were repealed earlier this year, with the thought that the state would tax the revenue as part of the way in which it would come up with the cash to pay for the massive public works programs many people across the state want.

BUT DuPAGE COUNTY recently passed a measure making it clear that the video poker devices had better remain for “entertainment purposes only,” or else they will still be illegal.

There is even talk that Cook and Will counties are considering similar action, along with the chance that Peoria County in central Illinois would do the same thing.

When one considers that Cook, DuPage and Will counties account for about 6.7 million people, or just over half of the state’s population, it sounds serious. It sounds like the counties are preparing to rebel against the governor’s desires and trash any hope that there will be money to pay for all those road repairs and other municipal construction projects that are part of a Capital Projects plan.

But we have to remember that the county boards and their respective sheriff’s police departments have direct control only over those portions of their areas that are unincorporated.

WHEN IT COMES to the Chicago area’s half-a-dozen counties, most people live in incorporated areas.

So for most people, the fact that the county board is “talkin’ tough” about wanting to continue to crack down on crime and the evils of gambling really doesn’t mean much.

Unless the individual city councils and village boards start taking it upon themselves to pass resolution after resolution exempting themselves from the video poker measure, the fact is that the devices will remain legal throughout much of the Chicago area, and Illinois – even though places like suburban Rosemont and Country Club Hills have enacted their own bans.

So Quinn is merely being level headed when he says he doubts that enough communities will take on a video poker waiver to seriously impact the amount of money to be raised for the Capital Projects plan.

THE FACT ALSO is that most municipalities these days are trying to figure out how to pay for all the things they need or want to do, at a time when their local sales tax revenues are down and foreclosures on the rise threaten the amount of local property taxes they will collect.

I honestly believe that most municipalities will go along with the idea of video poker being legal if it means they get money so they can repave their local streets.

Some people will argue that such an attitude is a disgrace.

Legal gambling in any form brings on social problems that threaten the status of our society. They’d argue we ought to be doing everything possible to discourage the very concept that gambling is acceptable in any form.

THEN, SOCIETY AS a whole likely would yawn in response, and a couple of people likely would tell those people to shut their yaps. For the fact is that we as a society have accepted gambling as a legitimate form of raising money.

Many of those people even go out of their way to use the word “gaming” to describe it because they don’t want to have to address the so-called moral qualms about gambling.

And I’m sure there are enough political people who will take that attitude that we won’t see a sea of morals swarming over us to suddenly keep video poker illegal.

So it is cute that Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart can get worked up over this issue and wonder what was going through the minds of his former political colleagues (he once represented the Mount Greenwood neighborhood in the Illinois General Assembly) when they went along with a measure to let video poker be illegal.

BUT IT’S NOT going to sway many political people.

I’d have to argue that the sudden move by the county government officials is more for political show than anything else.

They’re taking a vote that they can twist into something moral sounding on their campaign literature for next year’s election cycles, knowing it’s not going to have a significant impact on the character of the state.

For the reality is that we’re always going to have a certain number of people amongst us who will want to pump their change into a machine of some sorts out of hope that they will strike it rich and a lot of change will spit back out at them – at least allowing them to buy a round of drinks for everybody before they go back to trying to find another “get rich quick” scheme that rarely works.

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