Our View

If you’ve been watching the news in Alabama recently, you’ve probably heard about the state’s war on bingo. As recently as Feb. 26, Mobile District Attorney John Tyson Jr., under direction from Gov. Bob Riley, initiated a raid on a cavalier bingo hall in Chickasaw.

The laws governing bingo in Alabama are confusing, and the lobbying and propaganda from both sides of the gambling debate is enough to make your head spin. Even King acknowledges that he doesn’t know whether it’s legal or not.

We at The Vanguard feel the simplest solution is usually the best one. Make gambling legal, and pour the tax revenues into education.

Once you remove all the moral and religious arguments against gambling and look at the situation we have in Alabama logically, there really is no better option.

When people in Alabama want to gamble, they have to leave the state, visit the Indian casinos on reservations, or do it on the Internet. No matter which avenue is taken, they are taking their money out of Alabama and putting it into someone else’s coffers.

Legalizing gambling would keep the money in the Alabama economy and the tax revenues in the state’s dwindling bank account. Those revenues can be turned around to help our state’s desperate education budget, which lost more than $1 billion between 2008 and 2010.

Some forms of gambling are already legal in Alabama. Right here in Mobile we have a greyhound track where you can go throw your money away guessing which absurdly named dog will run faster than the rest of them.

It’s nothing more than hypocritical grandstanding that prevents other, less-cruel forms of gambling from being adopted, regulated, and collected on.

Not only would it bring in revenue, but legalized gambling could create hundreds of new jobs, from the construction of casinos to their operation.

According to the Mississippi State Tax Commission, they have consistently taken in over $300 million a year in revenue from gambling since 2000 (except in 2006, following Katrina).

People are going to gamble no matter what. We would prefer they did it here in Alabama, where it benefits our schools and us. We could sure use an extra $300 million a year.