"By now you’ve probably heard about Casino Chris. That’s what they’re calling Gov. Chris Gregoire in a new campaign ad. “$140 million,” the ad says. “That’s what the Indian casinos could have paid Washington state. Critical funds for education and to cut taxes, but in a bizarre move Chris Gregoire’s office negotiated a deal to let the casinos keep all $140 million.”

We can presume the sponsors of this ad, the Republican Governors Association, think it would have been a wise and good thing for state government to accept a $140 million cut of gambling profits. It is “bizarre,” they say, that the state is not now a full-fledged partner in tribal casinos, with a budget dependent on finding ever more effective ways to wrest cash from gullible people. This was a golden opportunity, they say, to finance education and tax cuts with part of the take. The ad shows a spinning roulette wheel and happy, well-dressed couples laughing and cheering as their chips fly into the air and fall from the sky. We could have had some of that money falling from the sky, too, if not for Casino Chris.

Yes, it might have been. Other states have not been so shy. They regulate tribal casinos and also accept “revenue sharing” or “tax” a percentage of the profits. This is a financially uplifting arrangement, where the regulators of gambling, the enforcers of it limitations, also get what in a former age was known as a piece of the action. The more money lost at the tables and stuffed into machines, the happier all will be.

This is the arrangement that the governor avoided. In 2005 the state Gambling Commission negotiated a compact with the Spokane Tribe, the only casino owners without an regulatory agreement with the state. The state would accept a share of casino revenue, and in return allow 7,500 video slot machines, a tenfold increase, and higher stakes, expanded hours, and new casinos on the reservation and off. All 22 casino-owning tribes in the state would have been entitled to the same arrangement. The state and local governments would get revenue, maybe $140 million as the ad says, but the price would have been an explosion of gambling."

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Tracy Warner: Nothing like a share of the pot (The Wenatchee World 9/16)