April 20, 2007
11:51 pm
Foundation taking table game challenge
to the public
By Mannix
Porterfield
REGISTER-HERALD
REPORTER
Hoping to put more arrows
in its quiver for a challenge of the table game law, the West Virginia
Family Foundation is going to the pews, the board rooms and directly to
individuals with a special survey.
Before filing its suit, the
conservative Christian group wants 50,000 signatures from voters saying
casino gambling never crossed their minds when voting on the 1984 lottery
amendment.
And that is the heart of its case — a contention the
lottery amendment cannot be used as the basis to legalize table games, and
thus, the Legislature’s bill cannot pass constitutional muster for that
very reason.
“We want to have the signatures in hand to present as
evidence that the average voter in 1984 were only voting for a lottery and
in their wildest imaginations, did not encompass table games,” the group’s
president, Ray Lambert of Beckley, said Friday.
“This would refute
the claims of our pro-gambling legislators and gambling promoters that
West Virginia voters approved casino table games when they passed the
lottery amendment in 1984.”
Special elections are planned June 9 in
the four affected dog-and-horse track counties of Jefferson, Ohio, Hancock
and Kanawha.
Just what approach the foundation will take through
its attorney, Barry Bruce of Lewisburg, remains to be seen.
There
has been talk of seeking injunctions to block the special elections while
the larger question of the table legislation signed by Gov. Joe Manchin is
taken up by the West Virginia Supreme Court.
Lambert said the group
is distributing surveys to churches, businesses, and individuals as a
means of increasing its evidence in a planned lawsuit.
“How they
voted, for or against the lottery, doesn’t matter,” he said.
“We
believe that the vast majority of all state voters believed that they were
voting just for a scratch-off lottery, and not opening up ‘Pandora’s Box’
to unlimited, uncontrollable casino gambling.”
No timeline has been
set on the actual filing of its case, although time is becoming critical
with the special elections already scheduled in the track
counties.
“We don’t have a date to say when we’ll be at the
courthouse steps,” Lambert said.
“But we’ve got good information.
The time we spent researching this has strengthened our case
greatly.”
Confidence is just as strong within the West Virginia
Racing Association, whose president, John Cavacini, said his group
welcomes the legal challenge.
“We feel confident and we feel
comfortable that the table games bill, when it was written, was written on
sound constitutional grounds, and our lawyers are prepared to defend
that,” Cavacini recently told The Register-Herald.
The foundation
announced plans to sue the Legislature on the final night of the session,
March 10, indicating it would also pursue other reasons besides the
constitutional issue, including the societal impacts of more sophisticated
gambling.
“The devastation of gambling addiction and the negative
impact upon West Virginia reaches far beyond the borders of these four
counties,” Lambert said.
“That’s why all West Virginia voters need
to vote on this harmful legislation.”
— E-mail:
mannix@register-herald.com
