A Minor Victory

Casino foes win a small battle, and vow to fight on.

by Doron Taussig

gaming

EGGS HATCHING: Anti-casino advocates Marc Stier, Rev. Jesse Brown and Anne Dicker are happy with recent developments, but remain wary. : Michael T. Regan

On a recent Wednesday night, a group of anti-casino activists gathered at the South Street Diner, ordered some food and grappled with an unfamiliar feeling. They suspected — although they were not sure — that they had experienced a victory.

Earlier that day, the office of state Sen. Vince Fumo, one of the strongest proponents of gaming in the state legislature and, consequently, one of the activists' sworn enemies, had sent out a press release announcing a flip-flop. Whereas the senator had previously hoped to take casino zoning out of the hands of local authorities in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the release said, he would now advocate leaving zoning matters to the city governments.

This came on the tail of a letter-writing campaign, facilitated by the activists, which had sent 419 independently written letters to Fumo's office, calling on him to — well, to do just what he did. In fact, the release attributed his reversal to "strong community opposition."

"Is it real, you think?" asked Anne Dicker, who, last May, nearly won an upstart bid for a state House seat by running against gaming.

"You cannot trust Fumo," answered Rev. Jesse Brown, of Casino-Free Philadelphia, a neighborhood organization which was party to a lawsuit, expected to be filed this week, challenging the state's gaming law. "He's demonstrated over and over that he can't be trusted."

If Brown is pessimistic, he can be forgiven: It hasn't been a fun ride for the ad hoc coalition of neighborhood groups and government reformers who oppose casinos in Philadelphia. Though gaming legislation was passed with a paucity of debate reminiscent of the infamous legislative pay raises, and though the introduction of casinos in Philly's neighborhoods will clearly affect city life more than John Perzel's paycheck does, the issue has sparked comparatively limited opposition.

This could be because people don't mind the prospect of gaming that much — a city task force poll found that most Philadelphians don't mind slots-only casinos in the city, but 60 percent don't want them near their homes — or it could be that, until they're built, most people won't realize what casinos will actually mean.

The folks at the diner think the real difference between the issues is media coverage: The pay-raise fight, they say, was driven by the papers, but the Inquirer and Daily News have been comparatively silent on gaming. They suspect that the papers' owners' investment in the casinos has been a factor.

Regardless, activists say, when they decided a couple of weeks ago to really focus on the "local control" issue, residents started taking notice.

"People finally got the sense they were losing control," says Marc Stier, an at-large candidate for City Council and an activist with Neighborhood Networks, even "outside of the neighborhoods" where the casinos are proposed.

Now, there are signs that the anti-casino movement is gaining just a bit of momentum. After the Fumo announcement, the state Senate amended a casino reform bill to restore zoning to local municipalities. The next day, the state House, spurred on by representatives who had also been subjects of the activists' lobbying, made two other changes activists had hoped for, including leaving "riparian rights" — the right to sell state-owned riverbank land — to the legislature. Traditionally, legislation to make such a sale is introduced by the representative from the affected district, and at least one Philadelphia lawmaker, Mike O'Brien, has said he wouldn't sell riparian rights to a casino unless neighborhood groups agree.

By the time the Senate passed its final bill on Friday, activists had "got everything we wanted," says Dicker. "We're very very very very very very very happy."

The diner contingent had been quick to point out that the reform bill was merely a battle in a much larger war. Activists still plan to fight, at the very least, the sites that have been chosen for casinos. They believe that if gaming is coming, it shouldn't be so close to residential neighborhoods.

"You know that Woody Allen quote, 'Everyone's miserable and some people are really horrible'?" Stier asked. "We have not won. We've gone from horrible to miserable."

But as he left that night, Stier struck a more hopeful tone. He was parting ways with Dicker, and, as he turned, called back, "You know, we're gonna get used to this winning."

(doron@citypaper.net)