"In the first three months of 2008, charity bingo operators in Sacramento County say they took in a combined $1.5 million for local charities. The money was used to fund school band programs and sports activities, among other things. About 80 percent of that revenue comes from electronic bingo or e-bingo as it is often called.

A year ago, county bingo regulators informed charity bingo operators that one type of e-bingo machine they were using was illegal. So operators replaced those machines with a different type of machine the county said was legal. Now, nudged by powerful gambling tribes, the state attorney general has declared those new machines illegal and has issued a cease-and-desist order, requiring bingo operators to remove the machines or risk having them confiscated.

Lurking behind this dispute are the Indian gambling tribes. They don't want charity bingo operators to have anything that might compete with their exclusive right to offer slot machines in California – and e-bingo looks a lot like slots.

Two things strike us as odd about this dispute.

First, how did bingo, the old-fashioned, low-stakes game that grandma used to play in the church basement to help fund the school's basketball team, wind up as a source of such conflict? And second, why in one of the richest states in the nation do school bands have to be financed by gambling bingo players, anyway?"

Get the Story:
Editorial: B-I-N-G-O spells 'mess' (The Sacramento Bee 6/7)
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