'Charity' gambling not that sweet

SANSOM PARK - The Jacksboro Highway ain't the Las Vegas Strip.

Yet this community is hooked on playing the slots.

Volunteer firefighters say they might have to quit fighting fires if they lose their cut from a $1.3 million-a-year gambling operation. So the mayor and the police seem in no hurry to shut it down.

Tarrant County sheriff's deputies might do that eventually -- but they're already dealing with 67 other "eight-liner" mini-casinos ordered to change or close by next weekend.

More than two months after the Texas Supreme Court upheld the long-standing ban on slot-machine gambling, Sansom Park has no plan to enforce the law.

Two months is enough warning. It's time to take out the trash on the Jacksboro Highway and other Tarrant County roads, and that includes the small-time casinos disguised as charity gambling halls -- really businesses that give only $1 or $1.50 of every $10 to firefighters or veterans clubs.

I feel sorry for the hard-working folks in Sansom Park. But if they really didn't know that such gambling is illegal -- and the volunteer fire chief says they didn't -- then they should know it now. The court ruled April 3.

And if they were betting that the Legislature would change the law -- no dice. A bill legalizing charity slots lost 3-to-1 in the Texas House. Play again in 2005.

Yet officials in this 1950s-era community of about 4,200 people are still not saying when they will close two gambling halls using the firefighters' name. Or even if.

The mayor and the city attorney are playing a semantics game.

"If [the machines] are deemed unlawful," Mayor Mike Wasser wrote by e-mail -- note the if -- "we will follow the law."

Wasser, the former fire chief, had insisted on only written questions. He gave no deadline on closing the two halls, saying that he would like to leave them open. "Everyone gets at least one lucky day," he said.

The city attorney, Walter Leonard of Fort Worth, was even more vague.

"We don't know yet which [game rooms] are legal or illegal," he said, adding that he thinks charity gambling is "probably OK." The city is still "waiting to hear" from other law enforcement agencies how to enforce the law, he said.

That may not be a long wait. A spokesman for Sheriff Dee Anderson said Thursday that deputies had not originally planned to close down gambling inside cities.

But "if a local police department refuses to enforce the law," sheriff's spokesman Terry Grisham said, "we will."

Meanwhile, third-year Sansom Park Volunteer Fire Chief Russell Shelly is pleading for more time. In an interview before a City Council meeting Thursday night, he said the idea of financing a fire department with gambling came from the business owner and other city officials, not from his volunteers.

In only nine months since the slot machines started jingling, firefighters have collected $150,000 to $180,000 -- enough to cover more than a year's budget. They already spent much of it for a new pumper truck.

"If we do close," he said -- there's that if again -- "my fire department's existence for the foreseeable future is uncertain. We will have almost no other funds."

Other cities find a legal way to pay for firefighting. It's called taxes.

"The city hasn't been able to give us this kind of money," Shelly said. "We've bought new protective gear, new radios, and we've been sending people to a lot of good training.

"If we have to go back to the old way" -- if again -- "it'll be a disappointment. I'm not sure how many guys will still want to volunteer."

There's one other spin to this game. A Fort Worth lawyer said Thursday that he is representing more than 10 local operators who are considering a legal challenge to the gambling crackdown.

"Some of these game rooms are giving 30 or 40 percent of the money to volunteer firefighters, police departments or veterans groups," attorney Trent Loftin said.

"Most of them are upset by the sheriff's ruling. There hasn't been a court ruling yet on the charities."

Operators of some of the gambling halls assert that they are not mini-casinos but "charity prize centers" where every penny or nickel played is a sweepstakes entry, not a bet.

But think about it: It never costs money to enter a legal sweepstakes contest. Even if charity organizations found some way to operate slot machines under those laws -- if again and a very big one -- they couldn't legally make anyone pay to play.

Wasser, the Sansom Park mayor, wrote in his e-mail that he thinks the gambling operation using the firefighters' name is "the only one set up as a game room that had any true charity."

"You have to admit," he said in a separate e-mail, "it's a lot safer than fireworks."

Sansom Park might see fireworks yet -- if it doesn't close the gambling halls.

By Bud Kennedy