Feature Article |
Gaming the System
By Matthew Teague
THE GOVERNOR’S FORTUNES changed most drastically during the July 4th holiday of 2004, with the saga of a little-known bill that came to be called Act 71. The State House had received the bill earlier that year — just a 33-line document about background checks at horse racetracks around the state. It had stayed in the House for 47 days, was passed, and then moved to the Senate, where it lived on for another 100 days.
On Thursday, July 1st, as the holiday weekend approached — along with the legislature’s summer break — the little 33-line bill underwent an extraordinary rebirth: Its original lines were scratched, and an epic 145-page addition was attached, as engineered by one Senator Vincent Fumo. The formerly innocuous bill now called for full-blown gambling, as envisioned by Rendell: an industry that would change the financial fabric of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, bringing as many as 61,000 slot machines to 14 locations, including two spots in Philadelphia.
That day, Representative Paul Clymer of Bucks County stood in the Capitol rotunda talking with another legislator. “My gosh, look at the lobbyists in here,” he said. Pinstriped gambling advocates had flooded the room. “I think they hired every lobbyist in Harrisburg.”
Clymer stood in the rotunda for several minutes, watching the lobbyists enter the Capitol. “I felt like I was in the eye of a storm,” he says. “This was a big push.”
The 145-page attachment and the holiday weekend arrived like the sprint at the end of an Olympic marathon, when previously unseen runners suddenly burst into the public arena. Behind the scenes, in the weeks leading up to the attachment, the Rendell-Fumo cabal had worked to ensure the bill’s passage before it had even been made public.
“The people behind this cut back-door deals,” Clymer says. “This thing was greased and oiled.”
So well greased, in fact, that it ran at top speed in reverse: Since the bill had already passed through the House in its 33-line form, the new 145-page version would flow backward, starting in the Senate first — Fumo’s stomping grounds — and then going back to the House.
There are 50 senators, so a majority vote requires 26. Since the 21 Democratic senators could be counted on, the bill required at least five votes from the Republican side. Rendell and Fumo, as governor and minority chair of the Senate appropriations committee, could loosen — or cinch — the purse strings for projects around the state. And gradually, a few possible Republican votes emerged.
“We were giving out money all over the place,” Fumo acknowledges. “We even gave Scarnati money for some trees or something.”
Joe Scarnati from Cameron County had voted against a previous incarnation of Rendell’s slots vision a year earlier, but had indicated that if the state would release money for state game lands in his district — to the tune of $5 million per year — he’d now vote yes. Don White, a senator from Indiana County, had also voted against Rendell’s previous attempt. But now Rendell promised to release $10 million for an unnamed project in White’s legislative district. John Pippy, from Allegheny County, offered to support the gambling expansion on the condition that his district’s financially shaky Pittsburgh Airport receive a $150 million bailout. Rendell agreed.
On Thursday, July 1st, as the holiday weekend approached — along with the legislature’s summer break — the little 33-line bill underwent an extraordinary rebirth: Its original lines were scratched, and an epic 145-page addition was attached, as engineered by one Senator Vincent Fumo. The formerly innocuous bill now called for full-blown gambling, as envisioned by Rendell: an industry that would change the financial fabric of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, bringing as many as 61,000 slot machines to 14 locations, including two spots in Philadelphia.
That day, Representative Paul Clymer of Bucks County stood in the Capitol rotunda talking with another legislator. “My gosh, look at the lobbyists in here,” he said. Pinstriped gambling advocates had flooded the room. “I think they hired every lobbyist in Harrisburg.”
Clymer stood in the rotunda for several minutes, watching the lobbyists enter the Capitol. “I felt like I was in the eye of a storm,” he says. “This was a big push.”
The 145-page attachment and the holiday weekend arrived like the sprint at the end of an Olympic marathon, when previously unseen runners suddenly burst into the public arena. Behind the scenes, in the weeks leading up to the attachment, the Rendell-Fumo cabal had worked to ensure the bill’s passage before it had even been made public.
“The people behind this cut back-door deals,” Clymer says. “This thing was greased and oiled.”
So well greased, in fact, that it ran at top speed in reverse: Since the bill had already passed through the House in its 33-line form, the new 145-page version would flow backward, starting in the Senate first — Fumo’s stomping grounds — and then going back to the House.
There are 50 senators, so a majority vote requires 26. Since the 21 Democratic senators could be counted on, the bill required at least five votes from the Republican side. Rendell and Fumo, as governor and minority chair of the Senate appropriations committee, could loosen — or cinch — the purse strings for projects around the state. And gradually, a few possible Republican votes emerged.
“We were giving out money all over the place,” Fumo acknowledges. “We even gave Scarnati money for some trees or something.”
Joe Scarnati from Cameron County had voted against a previous incarnation of Rendell’s slots vision a year earlier, but had indicated that if the state would release money for state game lands in his district — to the tune of $5 million per year — he’d now vote yes. Don White, a senator from Indiana County, had also voted against Rendell’s previous attempt. But now Rendell promised to release $10 million for an unnamed project in White’s legislative district. John Pippy, from Allegheny County, offered to support the gambling expansion on the condition that his district’s financially shaky Pittsburgh Airport receive a $150 million bailout. Rendell agreed.
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