A consultant's secret report predicts slot machines at one Pennsylvania casino would take in less than half of the average amount needed per machine statewide to raise $1 billion a year for property tax relief.
A 23-page portion of the PricewaterhouseCoopers study, obtained by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, projects a casino at The Meadows harness-racing track in Washington County would make $118.8 million a year -- $108 per machine each day -- or half the $236.6 million projected by the applicant.
The consultant's projection also is less than half of the $229 each machine in neighboring West Virginia earns. It's not known what the report projects for other casinos in the state.
If projections for other parlors also fall short, and are accurate, the 14 casinos allowed by law would not produce enough money to support Gov. Ed Rendell's promise for slots to raise $1 billion yearly for property tax relief. Rendell's projection counts on the state having 38,000 machines, each making $230 a day.
State lawmakers, themselves exempt from the state's open records law, said Wednesday that taxpayers deserve to see estimates for how much the other slots parlors might make. The state Gaming Control Board is refusing to release the findings.
"All of this ought to be transparent," said Rep. Tom Tangretti, D-Greensburg. "They ought to do it voluntarily. Absent that, we ought to amend the act to make sure that information is available to the public."
Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks, a gambling opponent, said people deserve to know "about a major operation coming into your neighborhood. ... Why are they keeping this (report) in the dark? All it does is make you wonder what they are keeping secret."
The analysis obtained by the Trib expects 95 percent of The Meadows' 1.8 million annual casino visits would be made by people living within a two-hour drive. It predicts 18 percent of adults from that market would gamble there, averaging six trips a year.
Bill Paulos, a partner at Las Vegas-based Millennium Gaming, which owns The Meadows, said this week the state's numbers are too low and would not support a casino. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Lawmakers said they will push in coming weeks for reforms that would compel the gambling board to act more openly, saying the full study by PricewaterhouseCoopers should be public.
Board chairman Tad Decker said Monday the report is "confidential" and that a request filed under the state's Right-to-Know law might yield "a few pages."
The board paid for the study with tax dollars and is billing the cost back to each casino applicant. The Meadows was charged $364,111 for the board's background work on its application, spokesman Doug Harbach said. It's not known if the consultant's work was included in that bill.
Lawmakers need to address the issue, said David Atkinson, executive assistant to Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer, R-Altoona, who opposes slots.
"This whole enterprise is supposed to be built on public confidence," Atkinson said. "It should be released, whether they have a legalistic interpretation of how this fits into the open records law or not."
Lawmakers must decide whether to specify which documents are required to be public, or whether to more broadly apply the state's Right to Know Law to the agency. There's a dispute in the Legislature about how much the law applies to the gambling board.
The board cannot claim the report contains confidential information, said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, because a page of the study was released at a gambling board hearing Monday.
The report should be released because it says how much money the state can expect to make from slots, she said.
"My basic response: What are they hiding?" said Eric Epstein, coordinator for RocktheCapital.org, a group seeking to make state government more accountable. "Why are you not releasing the data? The only conclusion I have is that the numbers are not adding up."
Language in the study says that it cannot be shared with a third party without the "prior written consent of PricewaterhouseCoopers."
Steven Silber, a company spokesman, said he did not know about the state study specifically, but that PricewaterhouseCoopers typically does not limit whether a customer gives out information.
"When we do work for agencies, public or otherwise, it is always the prerogative of the client to release our findings," Silber said. "Basically it's something they have bought and paid for. It's up to them to disclose it any way they see fit."
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