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7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 19
8
CASH COW
SACK OF HEARTACHE
and 983137
The wages of gamblingrsquos pervasive influence in Montana
BY ALAN KESSELHEIM
PHOTOGRAPHY BY THOMAS LEE
e all know one right Likely as not wersquore related to one
The friend who heads out shopping for groceries and comesback hours later with no food and no money The guy at the
Christmas party who disappears early and after midnight
driving home you see his car in the casino parking lot The brother-in-law who
one year drives a BMW and lives in a fancy house and the next moves in withhis parents The cousin who somehow loses his home despite working a good
job and along the way also loses his marriage and the custody of his kids
The guy who keeps heading off on mysterious business trips and pops back up
weeks later flat broke and looking like hersquos been at a month-long bachelor partyThe co-worker convicted of embezzling to support her gaming addiction
W
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 29
9M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 39
10
Or Will who I met recently in a local coffee shop and who
set the record for the fewest questions I ever asked during an
interviewldquoSo whatrsquos the back storyrdquo I started His answer took just
under three hours
More on Will in a minute
According to Montanarsquos constitution gambling remains
an illegal activity as it has been since 1889 But during the
Montana Constitutional Convention of 1972 the door was
opened with a referendum allowing the legislature and the
people to approve or disapprove gambling activities Starting the
very next year that is precisely what the legislature did In factitrsquos as if they were just waiting for that crack of opportunity
In 1973 the Montana Legislature passed the Card Game
Bingo Raffles and Sports Pool Act In 1976 keno was legalized
as a form of ldquolive bingordquo In 1985 the Video Poker Machine Act
was passed allowing five poker machines per liquor license and
live keno By the next year 1986 there were 2887 licensed
video gambling machines in the state Also in 1986 the
Montana Lottery was approved In 1991 the poker machine limit
was raised from five per liquor license to 20 And it keeps goinglike thatmdashmore machines more games more loopholes
It is worth noting that the people have not been as eager as
the legislature to usher in gambling when given a voice In 1950
and again in 1983 initiatives to legalize or expand gambling
were defeated by wide margins The only exception was the
voter passage of the Montana Lottery in 1986 on the promise of
reduced property taxes
To be fair for the better part of last century while gambling
was criminalized you can bet it was going on like gangbustersat small-town card tables sports pools and illegal gaming
halls Itrsquos also true that gambling has been with us since prehis-
tory when people circled up to throw bones in the dirt and is
unlikely to go away legal or not Hell you could argue that it is
with us in the biggest legal casino of all time that one we call
Wall Street
These days gambling seems to be everywhere under the Big
Sky It feels like every third commercial during a football game
promotes online sports betting I cringe each time thinking of
friends and family for whom a couple hundred extra dollars isalways deeply seductive Neon casinos sit garishly on Indian
land Gaming machines line up pinging and beeping and flash-
ing in bars and gas stations Lottery tickets at grocery stores
Scratch cards Live card tables Horse tracks Town Pump alone
runs some 70 casinos under the banners of Lucky Lilrsquos Montana
Lilrsquos and Magic Diamond At this point Montana has steered
clear of ldquopit gamesrdquo like blackjack or craps but wersquore all in
when it comes to poker machines and their ilk And who knows
what new inventive ways to wager will rear up on the wide-openfrontier of online gaming
Montana reflects the national trend Before 1989 commer-
cial casinos were only legal in Nevada and Atlantic City Several
court decisions in the late 1980s opened the door and by 1995
commercial gambling was legal in eight states By 2010 that
expanded to 13 tribal casinos were operating in 30 states river-
boat casinos became popular in the Midwest and South and
state lotteries morphed into revenue generators complete with
advertising campaigns and hyped-up jackpots In 2013 lotteryticket sales alone came to $68 billion in the United States more
than six times the $109 billion earned by movie ticket sales the
same year
Why this tidal wave of legalization Well the short answer
is that there is money to be made by preying on the publicrsquos
gambling proclivities taxes to be gathered and that is really
really hard to resist
How much money
Currently Montana collects on the order of $60 million fromvideo gambling machines every year far and away the biggest
gaming tax generator Add to that roughly $12 million annually
from the state lottery which since 1987 has contributed $229
million to state coffers More than $5 million is collected from
permit fees and smaller amounts trickle in from live card table
licenses racetracks and other gambling outlets So somewhere
a bit south of $100 million in Montana tax revenue every year
More than make it easy we promote it Ad campaigns feature the fun of it all that shimmering chance of being the next bigwinner They tout worthy causes like education or open-spacefunding making it almost our civic duty to participate
Comfortable chairs await gamblers at many Montana casinosmdashpart of the service package that can make time in front of a video gaming machine pass
quickly The money passes quickly too with some machines generating as much as $120 a day for their owners
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 49
11M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 59
12
comes out of the pockets of those of us who hunch in front of poker machines or buy
a lottery ticket every time we shop for groceries or play at a licensed card table
How that tax revenue gets parsed out is a bit of a thicket Gambling has been regu-
lated by the Montana Department of Justice since 1989 After what came to be knownas the ldquoBig Billrdquo was passed and put into practice by the Montana legislature in the
early 2000s gambling revenues were rolled in with other general state funds and
ever since the state has dispensed it to cities and counties through various formulas
depending on which pot itrsquos pulled from and which way the political winds are blowing
Back in 1998 a University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic
Research study funded by the Montana legislature found that gaming revenues
provided an average of 144 percent of city tax revenues across the state In some
communities gambling income contributed nearly 25 percent of the municipal
budget Itrsquos gotten more complicated since but gambling tax revenue at both thestate and local level is a significant slice of the pie
ldquoThe legislature plays with the formula all the timerdquo says Anna Rosenberry
Bozeman City Finance Director ldquoFrom year to year they add here and subtract
there You never know how itrsquos going to come inrdquo
According to DOJ figures the state collects roughly $2 million a year from
gambling in the city of Bozeman for example Of that the city might get $700000
Rosenberry calculates that gambling tax revenue currently funds 4-5 percent of
Bozemanrsquos tax base
As a side note Rosenberry remembers working for a local Lucky Lilrsquos as anaccountant while she was in college ldquoIt was sadrdquo she says ldquoThis is not the well-off
funding our tax base These are people who are already in difficult circumstances
Yes yoursquore taxing a choice people make freely but when I see the impacts on soci-
ety I donrsquot know if itrsquos a good traderdquo
Of course there are more equitable and less fraught ways to raise taxes espe-
cially in a state rolling in tourists Sales tax for one as well as gasoline taxes or more
liberally applied resort taxes all of which would capitalize on the tourism trade But
tax talk in Montana is a political no-no and those options donrsquot get much play
Bozemanrsquos mayor Carson Taylor worries about ldquohow much we are encouraging
gambling and facilitating problem gambling by making it so easyrdquo
More than make it easy we promote it Ad campaigns feature the fun of it all
1999$25 million
$30 million
$35 million
$40 million
$45 million
$50 million
$55 million
$60 million
$65 million
$70 million
2000 2001 2002 200 3 20 04 2005 20 06 2007 20 08 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
The Gamble Pays OffmdashAt Least for the StateFiscal year tax collection on video gambling machines in Montana
Source Montana Department of Justice
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 69
13M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
that shimmering chance of being the next big winner They tout
worthy causes like education or open-space funding making it
almost our civic duty to participate They show people rolling inpiles of money with four-leaf clovers floating in the air Never
mind that the odds of any one of us winning the lottery are akin
to being struck by lightning while being devoured by a shark
Like nil And sorry to say the machines that are the real cash
cows they are programmed to win for the house Thatrsquos just
how they work
ldquoYoursquove heard the sayingrdquo Taylor says ldquoGambling is a tax on
people who canrsquot do mathrdquo
ldquoIs this like soft drinks in schoolsrdquo he wonders ldquoSome say
itrsquos a matter of free choice others that it is preying on a sector of
societyrdquo
Which brings us back to Will with whom it becomes clear
that being able to do math is the least of it
ldquoIt started when I was maybe 7 years oldrdquo he says ldquoMygrandmother a problem gambler herself would take me with her
to horse races on weekends and then to the bingo hall All day
long it was horses bingo and drinking
ldquoMy uncle was a problem gambler too He committed suicide
after a big loss Yoursquod think that would have stopped me but
I ended up kind of emulating himmdashhard living drinking
gamblingrdquo
ldquoWhen I was 18 or 19 living in Iowa just across the river
from the track I got into horse racing myself That was when
I started pawning things to pay for the daily-double It began
to consume merdquo he admits ldquoI got suspended from high school
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 79
14
for running a football pool trying to be Jimmy the Greek or
somethingrdquo
As Willrsquos story unfolds his hands move delicately around his
coffee mug He looks straight at me while revealing the depths of
his depravity His recovery demands this level of full confession
this unvarnished no-excuses litany of the ways his addiction to
gambling utterly dominated his life and choices
His saga careens from the Midwest to Santa Fe to Great
Falls and West Yellowstone Los Angeles and New Orleans
Minnesota and South Dakota His life was a repeating cycle of
new starts clean living and then some trigger setting him off
into a spiral of marathon gambling blackout drinking sprees
trouble with the law
Remarkably Will kept landing solid jobs managing restau-rants and bars working at hotels Along the way he fell in love
got married had a daughter But every time something would
pull him back down He robbed a hotel in Montana and set off
on a gambling spree to the West Coast He borrowed money from
a friend and lost it all in the slots He got in trouble with book-
ies always needed money Whenever he got some cash it would
all vanish into slots or sports betting or horseracing or scratch
cards didnrsquot matter whatever was on
ldquoOne time I blew an entire $1300 paycheck in eight hourson one machinerdquo he remembers
ldquoThe gambling industry isnrsquot making their big bucks off of
occasional recreational mom-and-pop gamers Itrsquos people like
me who feed $20 bills into the machines until theyrsquore all gonerdquo
Willrsquos marriage dissolved He found himself at various rock-
bottom points standing on a high dock outside of New Orleans
or holding a sharp knife in a Great Falls alley wanted nothing
more than to end his life but then lacking the will to go through
with it Once he drank a cocktail of bleach vodka cocaine andwhiskey but the neighbors called the police and rushed him to
the hospital
There were homeless shelters counselors drugs to control
his impulses stints in jail rehab centers He lived in apart-
ments with no furniture because everything had been pawned
to support his habit He missed his daughter People tried to
help himmdashhis mother a mentor friends Others brought him
down by their own bad habits His life was a spinning whirlpool
of helplessness in the cycles of addiction
ldquoThank God for my momrdquo Will says ldquolsquoYoursquoll always be my
sonrsquo she kept telling me She never gave up My dad he finally
had enough I canrsquot blame him But my mom ended up buying
me a ticket back to Great Falls where I stayed in a homeless
shelter got a job eventually got some helprdquo
ldquoIrsquove been gambling free and sober since October 12 2014rdquo
he says ldquoMy longest run ever Itrsquos hard I still sometimes miss
it but Irsquom on a mission now to do something about gambling inMontana Irsquom not naiumlve but itrsquos part of my recovery Irsquove started
a campaign Irsquom speaking publicly at libraries and Rotary
Clubs meeting with politicians sharing my story collecting the
stories of others
ldquoThis is my way of paying back On one level itrsquos also selfish
because it helps me stay free
ldquoMy goal is to stand in front of the 2017 Montana legislative
session and make a plea that 10 percent of gambling revenue be
set aside for treatment programs run by the state Right now the
state doesnrsquot put a dime into treatment
ldquoLook I understand that you arenrsquot going to stop gambling
ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos deep within our characterfrom frontier days part of the western tradition As long as itrsquos out
there we might as well fund worthy causes by taxing itrdquo
Will one of an estimated 10000 pathological gamblers in Montana sayshe wants to see the state divert some of its revenue toward treatment
options for people with gambling problems
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 89
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y 15
But when you put casinos on every corner poker machines in
every bar and gas station you are forcing a temptation on the
populace
ldquoAnd whorsquos in charge of treating problem gambling inMontanardquo he asks ldquoThe Montana Tavern Association Thatrsquos
who funds the problem gambling hotlinerdquo Actually the MTA is
joined by the Gaming Industry Association Town Pump and the
Montana Coin Machine Operators Association in that funding
pool but his point stands
Will qualifies as a pathological gambler Roughly 1 percent
of the general population falls into that category Another 3-4
percent are problem gamblers Sounds small but in Montana
with a million people wersquore looking at 10000 pathological
gamblers and perhaps 40000 with a problem Take Willrsquos life
and the troubles associated with it and imagine the personal and
social mayhem when you do that math Beyond that studies show
as much as 80 percent of problem gamblers never seek treatment
and remain off the public radar
ldquoLookrdquo says Mark Staples former lobbyist for the Montana
Tavern Association ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos
deep within our character from frontier days part of the westerntradition As long as itrsquos out there we might as well fund worthy
causes by taxing itrdquo
Rosenberry Bozemanrsquos finance direc-
tor agrees that perhaps gambling should
help pay for some of the social impacts
that come as a result of problems asso-
ciated with itmdashthings like court costs
criminal investigations jail time
ldquoIrsquove noticed that if you dig deepenough into cases of fraud or embezzle-
mentrdquo she says ldquoGambling is usually
somewhere in the picturerdquo
Gambling proponents tout the
employment boost provided by the indus-
try and the worthy causes funded as
a result of the tax collections Studies
on the long-term economic impacts of
gambling are more muddyA 2011 study headed by Douglas
Walker at the College of Charleston
South Carolina found that ldquoCasino
gambling has a short-run stimulus effect
but in the long-run hellip casinos actually
detract from state government revenues
perhaps due to a large substitution away
from other types of spendingrdquo
Coming to grips with accurate esti-
mates of the social costs of problem
gambling is a challenge There are five
or six studies out there that make the attempt including Walkerrsquos
but their numbers can differ by a factor of 10 Strict interpretations
of the direct costs of problem gambling come in as low as $2000
per year per gambler Those that take a more inclusive approachand incorporate things like missed days of work bankruptcy court
divorce court lost productivity hellip come in at nearly $20000 per
year
That same 1998 University of Montana study that quanti-
fied city funding through gaming also found statistical correla-
tions between gambling and vandalism burglary larceny DUIs
weapons offenses and robbery Beyond that how do you put
value on more slippery mundane stuff like mom not being home
at night to help children with homework or a kidrsquos malnutrition
because the food money went into the poker machine
Ray Rasker with Headwaters Economics cites Paul
Krugmanrsquos work on ldquoopportunity costsrdquo These are tangential to
the standard costbenefit tallies
ldquoIn the case of gamblingrdquo says Rasker ldquoYoursquod look at the
person who goes out and drops $300 in poker machines instead
of going to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a deck Or
take the family to dinner or go to Yellowstone National Park helliprdquoldquoEconomists talk about the loss of productivity in both time
and workrdquo says Rasker ldquoNever mind time spent with kids or
430ndash900 TUESndashSAT
212 W Park St | Depot Center | Livingston MT
CUSTOM HOLIDAY GIFT BASKETS
4062225418 | TheGourmetCellarcom
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 99
more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 29
9M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 39
10
Or Will who I met recently in a local coffee shop and who
set the record for the fewest questions I ever asked during an
interviewldquoSo whatrsquos the back storyrdquo I started His answer took just
under three hours
More on Will in a minute
According to Montanarsquos constitution gambling remains
an illegal activity as it has been since 1889 But during the
Montana Constitutional Convention of 1972 the door was
opened with a referendum allowing the legislature and the
people to approve or disapprove gambling activities Starting the
very next year that is precisely what the legislature did In factitrsquos as if they were just waiting for that crack of opportunity
In 1973 the Montana Legislature passed the Card Game
Bingo Raffles and Sports Pool Act In 1976 keno was legalized
as a form of ldquolive bingordquo In 1985 the Video Poker Machine Act
was passed allowing five poker machines per liquor license and
live keno By the next year 1986 there were 2887 licensed
video gambling machines in the state Also in 1986 the
Montana Lottery was approved In 1991 the poker machine limit
was raised from five per liquor license to 20 And it keeps goinglike thatmdashmore machines more games more loopholes
It is worth noting that the people have not been as eager as
the legislature to usher in gambling when given a voice In 1950
and again in 1983 initiatives to legalize or expand gambling
were defeated by wide margins The only exception was the
voter passage of the Montana Lottery in 1986 on the promise of
reduced property taxes
To be fair for the better part of last century while gambling
was criminalized you can bet it was going on like gangbustersat small-town card tables sports pools and illegal gaming
halls Itrsquos also true that gambling has been with us since prehis-
tory when people circled up to throw bones in the dirt and is
unlikely to go away legal or not Hell you could argue that it is
with us in the biggest legal casino of all time that one we call
Wall Street
These days gambling seems to be everywhere under the Big
Sky It feels like every third commercial during a football game
promotes online sports betting I cringe each time thinking of
friends and family for whom a couple hundred extra dollars isalways deeply seductive Neon casinos sit garishly on Indian
land Gaming machines line up pinging and beeping and flash-
ing in bars and gas stations Lottery tickets at grocery stores
Scratch cards Live card tables Horse tracks Town Pump alone
runs some 70 casinos under the banners of Lucky Lilrsquos Montana
Lilrsquos and Magic Diamond At this point Montana has steered
clear of ldquopit gamesrdquo like blackjack or craps but wersquore all in
when it comes to poker machines and their ilk And who knows
what new inventive ways to wager will rear up on the wide-openfrontier of online gaming
Montana reflects the national trend Before 1989 commer-
cial casinos were only legal in Nevada and Atlantic City Several
court decisions in the late 1980s opened the door and by 1995
commercial gambling was legal in eight states By 2010 that
expanded to 13 tribal casinos were operating in 30 states river-
boat casinos became popular in the Midwest and South and
state lotteries morphed into revenue generators complete with
advertising campaigns and hyped-up jackpots In 2013 lotteryticket sales alone came to $68 billion in the United States more
than six times the $109 billion earned by movie ticket sales the
same year
Why this tidal wave of legalization Well the short answer
is that there is money to be made by preying on the publicrsquos
gambling proclivities taxes to be gathered and that is really
really hard to resist
How much money
Currently Montana collects on the order of $60 million fromvideo gambling machines every year far and away the biggest
gaming tax generator Add to that roughly $12 million annually
from the state lottery which since 1987 has contributed $229
million to state coffers More than $5 million is collected from
permit fees and smaller amounts trickle in from live card table
licenses racetracks and other gambling outlets So somewhere
a bit south of $100 million in Montana tax revenue every year
More than make it easy we promote it Ad campaigns feature the fun of it all that shimmering chance of being the next bigwinner They tout worthy causes like education or open-spacefunding making it almost our civic duty to participate
Comfortable chairs await gamblers at many Montana casinosmdashpart of the service package that can make time in front of a video gaming machine pass
quickly The money passes quickly too with some machines generating as much as $120 a day for their owners
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 49
11M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 59
12
comes out of the pockets of those of us who hunch in front of poker machines or buy
a lottery ticket every time we shop for groceries or play at a licensed card table
How that tax revenue gets parsed out is a bit of a thicket Gambling has been regu-
lated by the Montana Department of Justice since 1989 After what came to be knownas the ldquoBig Billrdquo was passed and put into practice by the Montana legislature in the
early 2000s gambling revenues were rolled in with other general state funds and
ever since the state has dispensed it to cities and counties through various formulas
depending on which pot itrsquos pulled from and which way the political winds are blowing
Back in 1998 a University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic
Research study funded by the Montana legislature found that gaming revenues
provided an average of 144 percent of city tax revenues across the state In some
communities gambling income contributed nearly 25 percent of the municipal
budget Itrsquos gotten more complicated since but gambling tax revenue at both thestate and local level is a significant slice of the pie
ldquoThe legislature plays with the formula all the timerdquo says Anna Rosenberry
Bozeman City Finance Director ldquoFrom year to year they add here and subtract
there You never know how itrsquos going to come inrdquo
According to DOJ figures the state collects roughly $2 million a year from
gambling in the city of Bozeman for example Of that the city might get $700000
Rosenberry calculates that gambling tax revenue currently funds 4-5 percent of
Bozemanrsquos tax base
As a side note Rosenberry remembers working for a local Lucky Lilrsquos as anaccountant while she was in college ldquoIt was sadrdquo she says ldquoThis is not the well-off
funding our tax base These are people who are already in difficult circumstances
Yes yoursquore taxing a choice people make freely but when I see the impacts on soci-
ety I donrsquot know if itrsquos a good traderdquo
Of course there are more equitable and less fraught ways to raise taxes espe-
cially in a state rolling in tourists Sales tax for one as well as gasoline taxes or more
liberally applied resort taxes all of which would capitalize on the tourism trade But
tax talk in Montana is a political no-no and those options donrsquot get much play
Bozemanrsquos mayor Carson Taylor worries about ldquohow much we are encouraging
gambling and facilitating problem gambling by making it so easyrdquo
More than make it easy we promote it Ad campaigns feature the fun of it all
1999$25 million
$30 million
$35 million
$40 million
$45 million
$50 million
$55 million
$60 million
$65 million
$70 million
2000 2001 2002 200 3 20 04 2005 20 06 2007 20 08 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
The Gamble Pays OffmdashAt Least for the StateFiscal year tax collection on video gambling machines in Montana
Source Montana Department of Justice
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 69
13M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
that shimmering chance of being the next big winner They tout
worthy causes like education or open-space funding making it
almost our civic duty to participate They show people rolling inpiles of money with four-leaf clovers floating in the air Never
mind that the odds of any one of us winning the lottery are akin
to being struck by lightning while being devoured by a shark
Like nil And sorry to say the machines that are the real cash
cows they are programmed to win for the house Thatrsquos just
how they work
ldquoYoursquove heard the sayingrdquo Taylor says ldquoGambling is a tax on
people who canrsquot do mathrdquo
ldquoIs this like soft drinks in schoolsrdquo he wonders ldquoSome say
itrsquos a matter of free choice others that it is preying on a sector of
societyrdquo
Which brings us back to Will with whom it becomes clear
that being able to do math is the least of it
ldquoIt started when I was maybe 7 years oldrdquo he says ldquoMygrandmother a problem gambler herself would take me with her
to horse races on weekends and then to the bingo hall All day
long it was horses bingo and drinking
ldquoMy uncle was a problem gambler too He committed suicide
after a big loss Yoursquod think that would have stopped me but
I ended up kind of emulating himmdashhard living drinking
gamblingrdquo
ldquoWhen I was 18 or 19 living in Iowa just across the river
from the track I got into horse racing myself That was when
I started pawning things to pay for the daily-double It began
to consume merdquo he admits ldquoI got suspended from high school
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 79
14
for running a football pool trying to be Jimmy the Greek or
somethingrdquo
As Willrsquos story unfolds his hands move delicately around his
coffee mug He looks straight at me while revealing the depths of
his depravity His recovery demands this level of full confession
this unvarnished no-excuses litany of the ways his addiction to
gambling utterly dominated his life and choices
His saga careens from the Midwest to Santa Fe to Great
Falls and West Yellowstone Los Angeles and New Orleans
Minnesota and South Dakota His life was a repeating cycle of
new starts clean living and then some trigger setting him off
into a spiral of marathon gambling blackout drinking sprees
trouble with the law
Remarkably Will kept landing solid jobs managing restau-rants and bars working at hotels Along the way he fell in love
got married had a daughter But every time something would
pull him back down He robbed a hotel in Montana and set off
on a gambling spree to the West Coast He borrowed money from
a friend and lost it all in the slots He got in trouble with book-
ies always needed money Whenever he got some cash it would
all vanish into slots or sports betting or horseracing or scratch
cards didnrsquot matter whatever was on
ldquoOne time I blew an entire $1300 paycheck in eight hourson one machinerdquo he remembers
ldquoThe gambling industry isnrsquot making their big bucks off of
occasional recreational mom-and-pop gamers Itrsquos people like
me who feed $20 bills into the machines until theyrsquore all gonerdquo
Willrsquos marriage dissolved He found himself at various rock-
bottom points standing on a high dock outside of New Orleans
or holding a sharp knife in a Great Falls alley wanted nothing
more than to end his life but then lacking the will to go through
with it Once he drank a cocktail of bleach vodka cocaine andwhiskey but the neighbors called the police and rushed him to
the hospital
There were homeless shelters counselors drugs to control
his impulses stints in jail rehab centers He lived in apart-
ments with no furniture because everything had been pawned
to support his habit He missed his daughter People tried to
help himmdashhis mother a mentor friends Others brought him
down by their own bad habits His life was a spinning whirlpool
of helplessness in the cycles of addiction
ldquoThank God for my momrdquo Will says ldquolsquoYoursquoll always be my
sonrsquo she kept telling me She never gave up My dad he finally
had enough I canrsquot blame him But my mom ended up buying
me a ticket back to Great Falls where I stayed in a homeless
shelter got a job eventually got some helprdquo
ldquoIrsquove been gambling free and sober since October 12 2014rdquo
he says ldquoMy longest run ever Itrsquos hard I still sometimes miss
it but Irsquom on a mission now to do something about gambling inMontana Irsquom not naiumlve but itrsquos part of my recovery Irsquove started
a campaign Irsquom speaking publicly at libraries and Rotary
Clubs meeting with politicians sharing my story collecting the
stories of others
ldquoThis is my way of paying back On one level itrsquos also selfish
because it helps me stay free
ldquoMy goal is to stand in front of the 2017 Montana legislative
session and make a plea that 10 percent of gambling revenue be
set aside for treatment programs run by the state Right now the
state doesnrsquot put a dime into treatment
ldquoLook I understand that you arenrsquot going to stop gambling
ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos deep within our characterfrom frontier days part of the western tradition As long as itrsquos out
there we might as well fund worthy causes by taxing itrdquo
Will one of an estimated 10000 pathological gamblers in Montana sayshe wants to see the state divert some of its revenue toward treatment
options for people with gambling problems
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 89
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y 15
But when you put casinos on every corner poker machines in
every bar and gas station you are forcing a temptation on the
populace
ldquoAnd whorsquos in charge of treating problem gambling inMontanardquo he asks ldquoThe Montana Tavern Association Thatrsquos
who funds the problem gambling hotlinerdquo Actually the MTA is
joined by the Gaming Industry Association Town Pump and the
Montana Coin Machine Operators Association in that funding
pool but his point stands
Will qualifies as a pathological gambler Roughly 1 percent
of the general population falls into that category Another 3-4
percent are problem gamblers Sounds small but in Montana
with a million people wersquore looking at 10000 pathological
gamblers and perhaps 40000 with a problem Take Willrsquos life
and the troubles associated with it and imagine the personal and
social mayhem when you do that math Beyond that studies show
as much as 80 percent of problem gamblers never seek treatment
and remain off the public radar
ldquoLookrdquo says Mark Staples former lobbyist for the Montana
Tavern Association ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos
deep within our character from frontier days part of the westerntradition As long as itrsquos out there we might as well fund worthy
causes by taxing itrdquo
Rosenberry Bozemanrsquos finance direc-
tor agrees that perhaps gambling should
help pay for some of the social impacts
that come as a result of problems asso-
ciated with itmdashthings like court costs
criminal investigations jail time
ldquoIrsquove noticed that if you dig deepenough into cases of fraud or embezzle-
mentrdquo she says ldquoGambling is usually
somewhere in the picturerdquo
Gambling proponents tout the
employment boost provided by the indus-
try and the worthy causes funded as
a result of the tax collections Studies
on the long-term economic impacts of
gambling are more muddyA 2011 study headed by Douglas
Walker at the College of Charleston
South Carolina found that ldquoCasino
gambling has a short-run stimulus effect
but in the long-run hellip casinos actually
detract from state government revenues
perhaps due to a large substitution away
from other types of spendingrdquo
Coming to grips with accurate esti-
mates of the social costs of problem
gambling is a challenge There are five
or six studies out there that make the attempt including Walkerrsquos
but their numbers can differ by a factor of 10 Strict interpretations
of the direct costs of problem gambling come in as low as $2000
per year per gambler Those that take a more inclusive approachand incorporate things like missed days of work bankruptcy court
divorce court lost productivity hellip come in at nearly $20000 per
year
That same 1998 University of Montana study that quanti-
fied city funding through gaming also found statistical correla-
tions between gambling and vandalism burglary larceny DUIs
weapons offenses and robbery Beyond that how do you put
value on more slippery mundane stuff like mom not being home
at night to help children with homework or a kidrsquos malnutrition
because the food money went into the poker machine
Ray Rasker with Headwaters Economics cites Paul
Krugmanrsquos work on ldquoopportunity costsrdquo These are tangential to
the standard costbenefit tallies
ldquoIn the case of gamblingrdquo says Rasker ldquoYoursquod look at the
person who goes out and drops $300 in poker machines instead
of going to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a deck Or
take the family to dinner or go to Yellowstone National Park helliprdquoldquoEconomists talk about the loss of productivity in both time
and workrdquo says Rasker ldquoNever mind time spent with kids or
430ndash900 TUESndashSAT
212 W Park St | Depot Center | Livingston MT
CUSTOM HOLIDAY GIFT BASKETS
4062225418 | TheGourmetCellarcom
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 99
more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 39
10
Or Will who I met recently in a local coffee shop and who
set the record for the fewest questions I ever asked during an
interviewldquoSo whatrsquos the back storyrdquo I started His answer took just
under three hours
More on Will in a minute
According to Montanarsquos constitution gambling remains
an illegal activity as it has been since 1889 But during the
Montana Constitutional Convention of 1972 the door was
opened with a referendum allowing the legislature and the
people to approve or disapprove gambling activities Starting the
very next year that is precisely what the legislature did In factitrsquos as if they were just waiting for that crack of opportunity
In 1973 the Montana Legislature passed the Card Game
Bingo Raffles and Sports Pool Act In 1976 keno was legalized
as a form of ldquolive bingordquo In 1985 the Video Poker Machine Act
was passed allowing five poker machines per liquor license and
live keno By the next year 1986 there were 2887 licensed
video gambling machines in the state Also in 1986 the
Montana Lottery was approved In 1991 the poker machine limit
was raised from five per liquor license to 20 And it keeps goinglike thatmdashmore machines more games more loopholes
It is worth noting that the people have not been as eager as
the legislature to usher in gambling when given a voice In 1950
and again in 1983 initiatives to legalize or expand gambling
were defeated by wide margins The only exception was the
voter passage of the Montana Lottery in 1986 on the promise of
reduced property taxes
To be fair for the better part of last century while gambling
was criminalized you can bet it was going on like gangbustersat small-town card tables sports pools and illegal gaming
halls Itrsquos also true that gambling has been with us since prehis-
tory when people circled up to throw bones in the dirt and is
unlikely to go away legal or not Hell you could argue that it is
with us in the biggest legal casino of all time that one we call
Wall Street
These days gambling seems to be everywhere under the Big
Sky It feels like every third commercial during a football game
promotes online sports betting I cringe each time thinking of
friends and family for whom a couple hundred extra dollars isalways deeply seductive Neon casinos sit garishly on Indian
land Gaming machines line up pinging and beeping and flash-
ing in bars and gas stations Lottery tickets at grocery stores
Scratch cards Live card tables Horse tracks Town Pump alone
runs some 70 casinos under the banners of Lucky Lilrsquos Montana
Lilrsquos and Magic Diamond At this point Montana has steered
clear of ldquopit gamesrdquo like blackjack or craps but wersquore all in
when it comes to poker machines and their ilk And who knows
what new inventive ways to wager will rear up on the wide-openfrontier of online gaming
Montana reflects the national trend Before 1989 commer-
cial casinos were only legal in Nevada and Atlantic City Several
court decisions in the late 1980s opened the door and by 1995
commercial gambling was legal in eight states By 2010 that
expanded to 13 tribal casinos were operating in 30 states river-
boat casinos became popular in the Midwest and South and
state lotteries morphed into revenue generators complete with
advertising campaigns and hyped-up jackpots In 2013 lotteryticket sales alone came to $68 billion in the United States more
than six times the $109 billion earned by movie ticket sales the
same year
Why this tidal wave of legalization Well the short answer
is that there is money to be made by preying on the publicrsquos
gambling proclivities taxes to be gathered and that is really
really hard to resist
How much money
Currently Montana collects on the order of $60 million fromvideo gambling machines every year far and away the biggest
gaming tax generator Add to that roughly $12 million annually
from the state lottery which since 1987 has contributed $229
million to state coffers More than $5 million is collected from
permit fees and smaller amounts trickle in from live card table
licenses racetracks and other gambling outlets So somewhere
a bit south of $100 million in Montana tax revenue every year
More than make it easy we promote it Ad campaigns feature the fun of it all that shimmering chance of being the next bigwinner They tout worthy causes like education or open-spacefunding making it almost our civic duty to participate
Comfortable chairs await gamblers at many Montana casinosmdashpart of the service package that can make time in front of a video gaming machine pass
quickly The money passes quickly too with some machines generating as much as $120 a day for their owners
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 49
11M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 59
12
comes out of the pockets of those of us who hunch in front of poker machines or buy
a lottery ticket every time we shop for groceries or play at a licensed card table
How that tax revenue gets parsed out is a bit of a thicket Gambling has been regu-
lated by the Montana Department of Justice since 1989 After what came to be knownas the ldquoBig Billrdquo was passed and put into practice by the Montana legislature in the
early 2000s gambling revenues were rolled in with other general state funds and
ever since the state has dispensed it to cities and counties through various formulas
depending on which pot itrsquos pulled from and which way the political winds are blowing
Back in 1998 a University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic
Research study funded by the Montana legislature found that gaming revenues
provided an average of 144 percent of city tax revenues across the state In some
communities gambling income contributed nearly 25 percent of the municipal
budget Itrsquos gotten more complicated since but gambling tax revenue at both thestate and local level is a significant slice of the pie
ldquoThe legislature plays with the formula all the timerdquo says Anna Rosenberry
Bozeman City Finance Director ldquoFrom year to year they add here and subtract
there You never know how itrsquos going to come inrdquo
According to DOJ figures the state collects roughly $2 million a year from
gambling in the city of Bozeman for example Of that the city might get $700000
Rosenberry calculates that gambling tax revenue currently funds 4-5 percent of
Bozemanrsquos tax base
As a side note Rosenberry remembers working for a local Lucky Lilrsquos as anaccountant while she was in college ldquoIt was sadrdquo she says ldquoThis is not the well-off
funding our tax base These are people who are already in difficult circumstances
Yes yoursquore taxing a choice people make freely but when I see the impacts on soci-
ety I donrsquot know if itrsquos a good traderdquo
Of course there are more equitable and less fraught ways to raise taxes espe-
cially in a state rolling in tourists Sales tax for one as well as gasoline taxes or more
liberally applied resort taxes all of which would capitalize on the tourism trade But
tax talk in Montana is a political no-no and those options donrsquot get much play
Bozemanrsquos mayor Carson Taylor worries about ldquohow much we are encouraging
gambling and facilitating problem gambling by making it so easyrdquo
More than make it easy we promote it Ad campaigns feature the fun of it all
1999$25 million
$30 million
$35 million
$40 million
$45 million
$50 million
$55 million
$60 million
$65 million
$70 million
2000 2001 2002 200 3 20 04 2005 20 06 2007 20 08 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
The Gamble Pays OffmdashAt Least for the StateFiscal year tax collection on video gambling machines in Montana
Source Montana Department of Justice
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 69
13M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
that shimmering chance of being the next big winner They tout
worthy causes like education or open-space funding making it
almost our civic duty to participate They show people rolling inpiles of money with four-leaf clovers floating in the air Never
mind that the odds of any one of us winning the lottery are akin
to being struck by lightning while being devoured by a shark
Like nil And sorry to say the machines that are the real cash
cows they are programmed to win for the house Thatrsquos just
how they work
ldquoYoursquove heard the sayingrdquo Taylor says ldquoGambling is a tax on
people who canrsquot do mathrdquo
ldquoIs this like soft drinks in schoolsrdquo he wonders ldquoSome say
itrsquos a matter of free choice others that it is preying on a sector of
societyrdquo
Which brings us back to Will with whom it becomes clear
that being able to do math is the least of it
ldquoIt started when I was maybe 7 years oldrdquo he says ldquoMygrandmother a problem gambler herself would take me with her
to horse races on weekends and then to the bingo hall All day
long it was horses bingo and drinking
ldquoMy uncle was a problem gambler too He committed suicide
after a big loss Yoursquod think that would have stopped me but
I ended up kind of emulating himmdashhard living drinking
gamblingrdquo
ldquoWhen I was 18 or 19 living in Iowa just across the river
from the track I got into horse racing myself That was when
I started pawning things to pay for the daily-double It began
to consume merdquo he admits ldquoI got suspended from high school
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 79
14
for running a football pool trying to be Jimmy the Greek or
somethingrdquo
As Willrsquos story unfolds his hands move delicately around his
coffee mug He looks straight at me while revealing the depths of
his depravity His recovery demands this level of full confession
this unvarnished no-excuses litany of the ways his addiction to
gambling utterly dominated his life and choices
His saga careens from the Midwest to Santa Fe to Great
Falls and West Yellowstone Los Angeles and New Orleans
Minnesota and South Dakota His life was a repeating cycle of
new starts clean living and then some trigger setting him off
into a spiral of marathon gambling blackout drinking sprees
trouble with the law
Remarkably Will kept landing solid jobs managing restau-rants and bars working at hotels Along the way he fell in love
got married had a daughter But every time something would
pull him back down He robbed a hotel in Montana and set off
on a gambling spree to the West Coast He borrowed money from
a friend and lost it all in the slots He got in trouble with book-
ies always needed money Whenever he got some cash it would
all vanish into slots or sports betting or horseracing or scratch
cards didnrsquot matter whatever was on
ldquoOne time I blew an entire $1300 paycheck in eight hourson one machinerdquo he remembers
ldquoThe gambling industry isnrsquot making their big bucks off of
occasional recreational mom-and-pop gamers Itrsquos people like
me who feed $20 bills into the machines until theyrsquore all gonerdquo
Willrsquos marriage dissolved He found himself at various rock-
bottom points standing on a high dock outside of New Orleans
or holding a sharp knife in a Great Falls alley wanted nothing
more than to end his life but then lacking the will to go through
with it Once he drank a cocktail of bleach vodka cocaine andwhiskey but the neighbors called the police and rushed him to
the hospital
There were homeless shelters counselors drugs to control
his impulses stints in jail rehab centers He lived in apart-
ments with no furniture because everything had been pawned
to support his habit He missed his daughter People tried to
help himmdashhis mother a mentor friends Others brought him
down by their own bad habits His life was a spinning whirlpool
of helplessness in the cycles of addiction
ldquoThank God for my momrdquo Will says ldquolsquoYoursquoll always be my
sonrsquo she kept telling me She never gave up My dad he finally
had enough I canrsquot blame him But my mom ended up buying
me a ticket back to Great Falls where I stayed in a homeless
shelter got a job eventually got some helprdquo
ldquoIrsquove been gambling free and sober since October 12 2014rdquo
he says ldquoMy longest run ever Itrsquos hard I still sometimes miss
it but Irsquom on a mission now to do something about gambling inMontana Irsquom not naiumlve but itrsquos part of my recovery Irsquove started
a campaign Irsquom speaking publicly at libraries and Rotary
Clubs meeting with politicians sharing my story collecting the
stories of others
ldquoThis is my way of paying back On one level itrsquos also selfish
because it helps me stay free
ldquoMy goal is to stand in front of the 2017 Montana legislative
session and make a plea that 10 percent of gambling revenue be
set aside for treatment programs run by the state Right now the
state doesnrsquot put a dime into treatment
ldquoLook I understand that you arenrsquot going to stop gambling
ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos deep within our characterfrom frontier days part of the western tradition As long as itrsquos out
there we might as well fund worthy causes by taxing itrdquo
Will one of an estimated 10000 pathological gamblers in Montana sayshe wants to see the state divert some of its revenue toward treatment
options for people with gambling problems
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 89
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y 15
But when you put casinos on every corner poker machines in
every bar and gas station you are forcing a temptation on the
populace
ldquoAnd whorsquos in charge of treating problem gambling inMontanardquo he asks ldquoThe Montana Tavern Association Thatrsquos
who funds the problem gambling hotlinerdquo Actually the MTA is
joined by the Gaming Industry Association Town Pump and the
Montana Coin Machine Operators Association in that funding
pool but his point stands
Will qualifies as a pathological gambler Roughly 1 percent
of the general population falls into that category Another 3-4
percent are problem gamblers Sounds small but in Montana
with a million people wersquore looking at 10000 pathological
gamblers and perhaps 40000 with a problem Take Willrsquos life
and the troubles associated with it and imagine the personal and
social mayhem when you do that math Beyond that studies show
as much as 80 percent of problem gamblers never seek treatment
and remain off the public radar
ldquoLookrdquo says Mark Staples former lobbyist for the Montana
Tavern Association ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos
deep within our character from frontier days part of the westerntradition As long as itrsquos out there we might as well fund worthy
causes by taxing itrdquo
Rosenberry Bozemanrsquos finance direc-
tor agrees that perhaps gambling should
help pay for some of the social impacts
that come as a result of problems asso-
ciated with itmdashthings like court costs
criminal investigations jail time
ldquoIrsquove noticed that if you dig deepenough into cases of fraud or embezzle-
mentrdquo she says ldquoGambling is usually
somewhere in the picturerdquo
Gambling proponents tout the
employment boost provided by the indus-
try and the worthy causes funded as
a result of the tax collections Studies
on the long-term economic impacts of
gambling are more muddyA 2011 study headed by Douglas
Walker at the College of Charleston
South Carolina found that ldquoCasino
gambling has a short-run stimulus effect
but in the long-run hellip casinos actually
detract from state government revenues
perhaps due to a large substitution away
from other types of spendingrdquo
Coming to grips with accurate esti-
mates of the social costs of problem
gambling is a challenge There are five
or six studies out there that make the attempt including Walkerrsquos
but their numbers can differ by a factor of 10 Strict interpretations
of the direct costs of problem gambling come in as low as $2000
per year per gambler Those that take a more inclusive approachand incorporate things like missed days of work bankruptcy court
divorce court lost productivity hellip come in at nearly $20000 per
year
That same 1998 University of Montana study that quanti-
fied city funding through gaming also found statistical correla-
tions between gambling and vandalism burglary larceny DUIs
weapons offenses and robbery Beyond that how do you put
value on more slippery mundane stuff like mom not being home
at night to help children with homework or a kidrsquos malnutrition
because the food money went into the poker machine
Ray Rasker with Headwaters Economics cites Paul
Krugmanrsquos work on ldquoopportunity costsrdquo These are tangential to
the standard costbenefit tallies
ldquoIn the case of gamblingrdquo says Rasker ldquoYoursquod look at the
person who goes out and drops $300 in poker machines instead
of going to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a deck Or
take the family to dinner or go to Yellowstone National Park helliprdquoldquoEconomists talk about the loss of productivity in both time
and workrdquo says Rasker ldquoNever mind time spent with kids or
430ndash900 TUESndashSAT
212 W Park St | Depot Center | Livingston MT
CUSTOM HOLIDAY GIFT BASKETS
4062225418 | TheGourmetCellarcom
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 99
more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 49
11M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 59
12
comes out of the pockets of those of us who hunch in front of poker machines or buy
a lottery ticket every time we shop for groceries or play at a licensed card table
How that tax revenue gets parsed out is a bit of a thicket Gambling has been regu-
lated by the Montana Department of Justice since 1989 After what came to be knownas the ldquoBig Billrdquo was passed and put into practice by the Montana legislature in the
early 2000s gambling revenues were rolled in with other general state funds and
ever since the state has dispensed it to cities and counties through various formulas
depending on which pot itrsquos pulled from and which way the political winds are blowing
Back in 1998 a University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic
Research study funded by the Montana legislature found that gaming revenues
provided an average of 144 percent of city tax revenues across the state In some
communities gambling income contributed nearly 25 percent of the municipal
budget Itrsquos gotten more complicated since but gambling tax revenue at both thestate and local level is a significant slice of the pie
ldquoThe legislature plays with the formula all the timerdquo says Anna Rosenberry
Bozeman City Finance Director ldquoFrom year to year they add here and subtract
there You never know how itrsquos going to come inrdquo
According to DOJ figures the state collects roughly $2 million a year from
gambling in the city of Bozeman for example Of that the city might get $700000
Rosenberry calculates that gambling tax revenue currently funds 4-5 percent of
Bozemanrsquos tax base
As a side note Rosenberry remembers working for a local Lucky Lilrsquos as anaccountant while she was in college ldquoIt was sadrdquo she says ldquoThis is not the well-off
funding our tax base These are people who are already in difficult circumstances
Yes yoursquore taxing a choice people make freely but when I see the impacts on soci-
ety I donrsquot know if itrsquos a good traderdquo
Of course there are more equitable and less fraught ways to raise taxes espe-
cially in a state rolling in tourists Sales tax for one as well as gasoline taxes or more
liberally applied resort taxes all of which would capitalize on the tourism trade But
tax talk in Montana is a political no-no and those options donrsquot get much play
Bozemanrsquos mayor Carson Taylor worries about ldquohow much we are encouraging
gambling and facilitating problem gambling by making it so easyrdquo
More than make it easy we promote it Ad campaigns feature the fun of it all
1999$25 million
$30 million
$35 million
$40 million
$45 million
$50 million
$55 million
$60 million
$65 million
$70 million
2000 2001 2002 200 3 20 04 2005 20 06 2007 20 08 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
The Gamble Pays OffmdashAt Least for the StateFiscal year tax collection on video gambling machines in Montana
Source Montana Department of Justice
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 69
13M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
that shimmering chance of being the next big winner They tout
worthy causes like education or open-space funding making it
almost our civic duty to participate They show people rolling inpiles of money with four-leaf clovers floating in the air Never
mind that the odds of any one of us winning the lottery are akin
to being struck by lightning while being devoured by a shark
Like nil And sorry to say the machines that are the real cash
cows they are programmed to win for the house Thatrsquos just
how they work
ldquoYoursquove heard the sayingrdquo Taylor says ldquoGambling is a tax on
people who canrsquot do mathrdquo
ldquoIs this like soft drinks in schoolsrdquo he wonders ldquoSome say
itrsquos a matter of free choice others that it is preying on a sector of
societyrdquo
Which brings us back to Will with whom it becomes clear
that being able to do math is the least of it
ldquoIt started when I was maybe 7 years oldrdquo he says ldquoMygrandmother a problem gambler herself would take me with her
to horse races on weekends and then to the bingo hall All day
long it was horses bingo and drinking
ldquoMy uncle was a problem gambler too He committed suicide
after a big loss Yoursquod think that would have stopped me but
I ended up kind of emulating himmdashhard living drinking
gamblingrdquo
ldquoWhen I was 18 or 19 living in Iowa just across the river
from the track I got into horse racing myself That was when
I started pawning things to pay for the daily-double It began
to consume merdquo he admits ldquoI got suspended from high school
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 79
14
for running a football pool trying to be Jimmy the Greek or
somethingrdquo
As Willrsquos story unfolds his hands move delicately around his
coffee mug He looks straight at me while revealing the depths of
his depravity His recovery demands this level of full confession
this unvarnished no-excuses litany of the ways his addiction to
gambling utterly dominated his life and choices
His saga careens from the Midwest to Santa Fe to Great
Falls and West Yellowstone Los Angeles and New Orleans
Minnesota and South Dakota His life was a repeating cycle of
new starts clean living and then some trigger setting him off
into a spiral of marathon gambling blackout drinking sprees
trouble with the law
Remarkably Will kept landing solid jobs managing restau-rants and bars working at hotels Along the way he fell in love
got married had a daughter But every time something would
pull him back down He robbed a hotel in Montana and set off
on a gambling spree to the West Coast He borrowed money from
a friend and lost it all in the slots He got in trouble with book-
ies always needed money Whenever he got some cash it would
all vanish into slots or sports betting or horseracing or scratch
cards didnrsquot matter whatever was on
ldquoOne time I blew an entire $1300 paycheck in eight hourson one machinerdquo he remembers
ldquoThe gambling industry isnrsquot making their big bucks off of
occasional recreational mom-and-pop gamers Itrsquos people like
me who feed $20 bills into the machines until theyrsquore all gonerdquo
Willrsquos marriage dissolved He found himself at various rock-
bottom points standing on a high dock outside of New Orleans
or holding a sharp knife in a Great Falls alley wanted nothing
more than to end his life but then lacking the will to go through
with it Once he drank a cocktail of bleach vodka cocaine andwhiskey but the neighbors called the police and rushed him to
the hospital
There were homeless shelters counselors drugs to control
his impulses stints in jail rehab centers He lived in apart-
ments with no furniture because everything had been pawned
to support his habit He missed his daughter People tried to
help himmdashhis mother a mentor friends Others brought him
down by their own bad habits His life was a spinning whirlpool
of helplessness in the cycles of addiction
ldquoThank God for my momrdquo Will says ldquolsquoYoursquoll always be my
sonrsquo she kept telling me She never gave up My dad he finally
had enough I canrsquot blame him But my mom ended up buying
me a ticket back to Great Falls where I stayed in a homeless
shelter got a job eventually got some helprdquo
ldquoIrsquove been gambling free and sober since October 12 2014rdquo
he says ldquoMy longest run ever Itrsquos hard I still sometimes miss
it but Irsquom on a mission now to do something about gambling inMontana Irsquom not naiumlve but itrsquos part of my recovery Irsquove started
a campaign Irsquom speaking publicly at libraries and Rotary
Clubs meeting with politicians sharing my story collecting the
stories of others
ldquoThis is my way of paying back On one level itrsquos also selfish
because it helps me stay free
ldquoMy goal is to stand in front of the 2017 Montana legislative
session and make a plea that 10 percent of gambling revenue be
set aside for treatment programs run by the state Right now the
state doesnrsquot put a dime into treatment
ldquoLook I understand that you arenrsquot going to stop gambling
ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos deep within our characterfrom frontier days part of the western tradition As long as itrsquos out
there we might as well fund worthy causes by taxing itrdquo
Will one of an estimated 10000 pathological gamblers in Montana sayshe wants to see the state divert some of its revenue toward treatment
options for people with gambling problems
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 89
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y 15
But when you put casinos on every corner poker machines in
every bar and gas station you are forcing a temptation on the
populace
ldquoAnd whorsquos in charge of treating problem gambling inMontanardquo he asks ldquoThe Montana Tavern Association Thatrsquos
who funds the problem gambling hotlinerdquo Actually the MTA is
joined by the Gaming Industry Association Town Pump and the
Montana Coin Machine Operators Association in that funding
pool but his point stands
Will qualifies as a pathological gambler Roughly 1 percent
of the general population falls into that category Another 3-4
percent are problem gamblers Sounds small but in Montana
with a million people wersquore looking at 10000 pathological
gamblers and perhaps 40000 with a problem Take Willrsquos life
and the troubles associated with it and imagine the personal and
social mayhem when you do that math Beyond that studies show
as much as 80 percent of problem gamblers never seek treatment
and remain off the public radar
ldquoLookrdquo says Mark Staples former lobbyist for the Montana
Tavern Association ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos
deep within our character from frontier days part of the westerntradition As long as itrsquos out there we might as well fund worthy
causes by taxing itrdquo
Rosenberry Bozemanrsquos finance direc-
tor agrees that perhaps gambling should
help pay for some of the social impacts
that come as a result of problems asso-
ciated with itmdashthings like court costs
criminal investigations jail time
ldquoIrsquove noticed that if you dig deepenough into cases of fraud or embezzle-
mentrdquo she says ldquoGambling is usually
somewhere in the picturerdquo
Gambling proponents tout the
employment boost provided by the indus-
try and the worthy causes funded as
a result of the tax collections Studies
on the long-term economic impacts of
gambling are more muddyA 2011 study headed by Douglas
Walker at the College of Charleston
South Carolina found that ldquoCasino
gambling has a short-run stimulus effect
but in the long-run hellip casinos actually
detract from state government revenues
perhaps due to a large substitution away
from other types of spendingrdquo
Coming to grips with accurate esti-
mates of the social costs of problem
gambling is a challenge There are five
or six studies out there that make the attempt including Walkerrsquos
but their numbers can differ by a factor of 10 Strict interpretations
of the direct costs of problem gambling come in as low as $2000
per year per gambler Those that take a more inclusive approachand incorporate things like missed days of work bankruptcy court
divorce court lost productivity hellip come in at nearly $20000 per
year
That same 1998 University of Montana study that quanti-
fied city funding through gaming also found statistical correla-
tions between gambling and vandalism burglary larceny DUIs
weapons offenses and robbery Beyond that how do you put
value on more slippery mundane stuff like mom not being home
at night to help children with homework or a kidrsquos malnutrition
because the food money went into the poker machine
Ray Rasker with Headwaters Economics cites Paul
Krugmanrsquos work on ldquoopportunity costsrdquo These are tangential to
the standard costbenefit tallies
ldquoIn the case of gamblingrdquo says Rasker ldquoYoursquod look at the
person who goes out and drops $300 in poker machines instead
of going to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a deck Or
take the family to dinner or go to Yellowstone National Park helliprdquoldquoEconomists talk about the loss of productivity in both time
and workrdquo says Rasker ldquoNever mind time spent with kids or
430ndash900 TUESndashSAT
212 W Park St | Depot Center | Livingston MT
CUSTOM HOLIDAY GIFT BASKETS
4062225418 | TheGourmetCellarcom
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 99
more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 59
12
comes out of the pockets of those of us who hunch in front of poker machines or buy
a lottery ticket every time we shop for groceries or play at a licensed card table
How that tax revenue gets parsed out is a bit of a thicket Gambling has been regu-
lated by the Montana Department of Justice since 1989 After what came to be knownas the ldquoBig Billrdquo was passed and put into practice by the Montana legislature in the
early 2000s gambling revenues were rolled in with other general state funds and
ever since the state has dispensed it to cities and counties through various formulas
depending on which pot itrsquos pulled from and which way the political winds are blowing
Back in 1998 a University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic
Research study funded by the Montana legislature found that gaming revenues
provided an average of 144 percent of city tax revenues across the state In some
communities gambling income contributed nearly 25 percent of the municipal
budget Itrsquos gotten more complicated since but gambling tax revenue at both thestate and local level is a significant slice of the pie
ldquoThe legislature plays with the formula all the timerdquo says Anna Rosenberry
Bozeman City Finance Director ldquoFrom year to year they add here and subtract
there You never know how itrsquos going to come inrdquo
According to DOJ figures the state collects roughly $2 million a year from
gambling in the city of Bozeman for example Of that the city might get $700000
Rosenberry calculates that gambling tax revenue currently funds 4-5 percent of
Bozemanrsquos tax base
As a side note Rosenberry remembers working for a local Lucky Lilrsquos as anaccountant while she was in college ldquoIt was sadrdquo she says ldquoThis is not the well-off
funding our tax base These are people who are already in difficult circumstances
Yes yoursquore taxing a choice people make freely but when I see the impacts on soci-
ety I donrsquot know if itrsquos a good traderdquo
Of course there are more equitable and less fraught ways to raise taxes espe-
cially in a state rolling in tourists Sales tax for one as well as gasoline taxes or more
liberally applied resort taxes all of which would capitalize on the tourism trade But
tax talk in Montana is a political no-no and those options donrsquot get much play
Bozemanrsquos mayor Carson Taylor worries about ldquohow much we are encouraging
gambling and facilitating problem gambling by making it so easyrdquo
More than make it easy we promote it Ad campaigns feature the fun of it all
1999$25 million
$30 million
$35 million
$40 million
$45 million
$50 million
$55 million
$60 million
$65 million
$70 million
2000 2001 2002 200 3 20 04 2005 20 06 2007 20 08 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
The Gamble Pays OffmdashAt Least for the StateFiscal year tax collection on video gambling machines in Montana
Source Montana Department of Justice
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 69
13M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
that shimmering chance of being the next big winner They tout
worthy causes like education or open-space funding making it
almost our civic duty to participate They show people rolling inpiles of money with four-leaf clovers floating in the air Never
mind that the odds of any one of us winning the lottery are akin
to being struck by lightning while being devoured by a shark
Like nil And sorry to say the machines that are the real cash
cows they are programmed to win for the house Thatrsquos just
how they work
ldquoYoursquove heard the sayingrdquo Taylor says ldquoGambling is a tax on
people who canrsquot do mathrdquo
ldquoIs this like soft drinks in schoolsrdquo he wonders ldquoSome say
itrsquos a matter of free choice others that it is preying on a sector of
societyrdquo
Which brings us back to Will with whom it becomes clear
that being able to do math is the least of it
ldquoIt started when I was maybe 7 years oldrdquo he says ldquoMygrandmother a problem gambler herself would take me with her
to horse races on weekends and then to the bingo hall All day
long it was horses bingo and drinking
ldquoMy uncle was a problem gambler too He committed suicide
after a big loss Yoursquod think that would have stopped me but
I ended up kind of emulating himmdashhard living drinking
gamblingrdquo
ldquoWhen I was 18 or 19 living in Iowa just across the river
from the track I got into horse racing myself That was when
I started pawning things to pay for the daily-double It began
to consume merdquo he admits ldquoI got suspended from high school
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 79
14
for running a football pool trying to be Jimmy the Greek or
somethingrdquo
As Willrsquos story unfolds his hands move delicately around his
coffee mug He looks straight at me while revealing the depths of
his depravity His recovery demands this level of full confession
this unvarnished no-excuses litany of the ways his addiction to
gambling utterly dominated his life and choices
His saga careens from the Midwest to Santa Fe to Great
Falls and West Yellowstone Los Angeles and New Orleans
Minnesota and South Dakota His life was a repeating cycle of
new starts clean living and then some trigger setting him off
into a spiral of marathon gambling blackout drinking sprees
trouble with the law
Remarkably Will kept landing solid jobs managing restau-rants and bars working at hotels Along the way he fell in love
got married had a daughter But every time something would
pull him back down He robbed a hotel in Montana and set off
on a gambling spree to the West Coast He borrowed money from
a friend and lost it all in the slots He got in trouble with book-
ies always needed money Whenever he got some cash it would
all vanish into slots or sports betting or horseracing or scratch
cards didnrsquot matter whatever was on
ldquoOne time I blew an entire $1300 paycheck in eight hourson one machinerdquo he remembers
ldquoThe gambling industry isnrsquot making their big bucks off of
occasional recreational mom-and-pop gamers Itrsquos people like
me who feed $20 bills into the machines until theyrsquore all gonerdquo
Willrsquos marriage dissolved He found himself at various rock-
bottom points standing on a high dock outside of New Orleans
or holding a sharp knife in a Great Falls alley wanted nothing
more than to end his life but then lacking the will to go through
with it Once he drank a cocktail of bleach vodka cocaine andwhiskey but the neighbors called the police and rushed him to
the hospital
There were homeless shelters counselors drugs to control
his impulses stints in jail rehab centers He lived in apart-
ments with no furniture because everything had been pawned
to support his habit He missed his daughter People tried to
help himmdashhis mother a mentor friends Others brought him
down by their own bad habits His life was a spinning whirlpool
of helplessness in the cycles of addiction
ldquoThank God for my momrdquo Will says ldquolsquoYoursquoll always be my
sonrsquo she kept telling me She never gave up My dad he finally
had enough I canrsquot blame him But my mom ended up buying
me a ticket back to Great Falls where I stayed in a homeless
shelter got a job eventually got some helprdquo
ldquoIrsquove been gambling free and sober since October 12 2014rdquo
he says ldquoMy longest run ever Itrsquos hard I still sometimes miss
it but Irsquom on a mission now to do something about gambling inMontana Irsquom not naiumlve but itrsquos part of my recovery Irsquove started
a campaign Irsquom speaking publicly at libraries and Rotary
Clubs meeting with politicians sharing my story collecting the
stories of others
ldquoThis is my way of paying back On one level itrsquos also selfish
because it helps me stay free
ldquoMy goal is to stand in front of the 2017 Montana legislative
session and make a plea that 10 percent of gambling revenue be
set aside for treatment programs run by the state Right now the
state doesnrsquot put a dime into treatment
ldquoLook I understand that you arenrsquot going to stop gambling
ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos deep within our characterfrom frontier days part of the western tradition As long as itrsquos out
there we might as well fund worthy causes by taxing itrdquo
Will one of an estimated 10000 pathological gamblers in Montana sayshe wants to see the state divert some of its revenue toward treatment
options for people with gambling problems
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 89
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y 15
But when you put casinos on every corner poker machines in
every bar and gas station you are forcing a temptation on the
populace
ldquoAnd whorsquos in charge of treating problem gambling inMontanardquo he asks ldquoThe Montana Tavern Association Thatrsquos
who funds the problem gambling hotlinerdquo Actually the MTA is
joined by the Gaming Industry Association Town Pump and the
Montana Coin Machine Operators Association in that funding
pool but his point stands
Will qualifies as a pathological gambler Roughly 1 percent
of the general population falls into that category Another 3-4
percent are problem gamblers Sounds small but in Montana
with a million people wersquore looking at 10000 pathological
gamblers and perhaps 40000 with a problem Take Willrsquos life
and the troubles associated with it and imagine the personal and
social mayhem when you do that math Beyond that studies show
as much as 80 percent of problem gamblers never seek treatment
and remain off the public radar
ldquoLookrdquo says Mark Staples former lobbyist for the Montana
Tavern Association ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos
deep within our character from frontier days part of the westerntradition As long as itrsquos out there we might as well fund worthy
causes by taxing itrdquo
Rosenberry Bozemanrsquos finance direc-
tor agrees that perhaps gambling should
help pay for some of the social impacts
that come as a result of problems asso-
ciated with itmdashthings like court costs
criminal investigations jail time
ldquoIrsquove noticed that if you dig deepenough into cases of fraud or embezzle-
mentrdquo she says ldquoGambling is usually
somewhere in the picturerdquo
Gambling proponents tout the
employment boost provided by the indus-
try and the worthy causes funded as
a result of the tax collections Studies
on the long-term economic impacts of
gambling are more muddyA 2011 study headed by Douglas
Walker at the College of Charleston
South Carolina found that ldquoCasino
gambling has a short-run stimulus effect
but in the long-run hellip casinos actually
detract from state government revenues
perhaps due to a large substitution away
from other types of spendingrdquo
Coming to grips with accurate esti-
mates of the social costs of problem
gambling is a challenge There are five
or six studies out there that make the attempt including Walkerrsquos
but their numbers can differ by a factor of 10 Strict interpretations
of the direct costs of problem gambling come in as low as $2000
per year per gambler Those that take a more inclusive approachand incorporate things like missed days of work bankruptcy court
divorce court lost productivity hellip come in at nearly $20000 per
year
That same 1998 University of Montana study that quanti-
fied city funding through gaming also found statistical correla-
tions between gambling and vandalism burglary larceny DUIs
weapons offenses and robbery Beyond that how do you put
value on more slippery mundane stuff like mom not being home
at night to help children with homework or a kidrsquos malnutrition
because the food money went into the poker machine
Ray Rasker with Headwaters Economics cites Paul
Krugmanrsquos work on ldquoopportunity costsrdquo These are tangential to
the standard costbenefit tallies
ldquoIn the case of gamblingrdquo says Rasker ldquoYoursquod look at the
person who goes out and drops $300 in poker machines instead
of going to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a deck Or
take the family to dinner or go to Yellowstone National Park helliprdquoldquoEconomists talk about the loss of productivity in both time
and workrdquo says Rasker ldquoNever mind time spent with kids or
430ndash900 TUESndashSAT
212 W Park St | Depot Center | Livingston MT
CUSTOM HOLIDAY GIFT BASKETS
4062225418 | TheGourmetCellarcom
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 99
more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 69
13M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y
that shimmering chance of being the next big winner They tout
worthy causes like education or open-space funding making it
almost our civic duty to participate They show people rolling inpiles of money with four-leaf clovers floating in the air Never
mind that the odds of any one of us winning the lottery are akin
to being struck by lightning while being devoured by a shark
Like nil And sorry to say the machines that are the real cash
cows they are programmed to win for the house Thatrsquos just
how they work
ldquoYoursquove heard the sayingrdquo Taylor says ldquoGambling is a tax on
people who canrsquot do mathrdquo
ldquoIs this like soft drinks in schoolsrdquo he wonders ldquoSome say
itrsquos a matter of free choice others that it is preying on a sector of
societyrdquo
Which brings us back to Will with whom it becomes clear
that being able to do math is the least of it
ldquoIt started when I was maybe 7 years oldrdquo he says ldquoMygrandmother a problem gambler herself would take me with her
to horse races on weekends and then to the bingo hall All day
long it was horses bingo and drinking
ldquoMy uncle was a problem gambler too He committed suicide
after a big loss Yoursquod think that would have stopped me but
I ended up kind of emulating himmdashhard living drinking
gamblingrdquo
ldquoWhen I was 18 or 19 living in Iowa just across the river
from the track I got into horse racing myself That was when
I started pawning things to pay for the daily-double It began
to consume merdquo he admits ldquoI got suspended from high school
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 79
14
for running a football pool trying to be Jimmy the Greek or
somethingrdquo
As Willrsquos story unfolds his hands move delicately around his
coffee mug He looks straight at me while revealing the depths of
his depravity His recovery demands this level of full confession
this unvarnished no-excuses litany of the ways his addiction to
gambling utterly dominated his life and choices
His saga careens from the Midwest to Santa Fe to Great
Falls and West Yellowstone Los Angeles and New Orleans
Minnesota and South Dakota His life was a repeating cycle of
new starts clean living and then some trigger setting him off
into a spiral of marathon gambling blackout drinking sprees
trouble with the law
Remarkably Will kept landing solid jobs managing restau-rants and bars working at hotels Along the way he fell in love
got married had a daughter But every time something would
pull him back down He robbed a hotel in Montana and set off
on a gambling spree to the West Coast He borrowed money from
a friend and lost it all in the slots He got in trouble with book-
ies always needed money Whenever he got some cash it would
all vanish into slots or sports betting or horseracing or scratch
cards didnrsquot matter whatever was on
ldquoOne time I blew an entire $1300 paycheck in eight hourson one machinerdquo he remembers
ldquoThe gambling industry isnrsquot making their big bucks off of
occasional recreational mom-and-pop gamers Itrsquos people like
me who feed $20 bills into the machines until theyrsquore all gonerdquo
Willrsquos marriage dissolved He found himself at various rock-
bottom points standing on a high dock outside of New Orleans
or holding a sharp knife in a Great Falls alley wanted nothing
more than to end his life but then lacking the will to go through
with it Once he drank a cocktail of bleach vodka cocaine andwhiskey but the neighbors called the police and rushed him to
the hospital
There were homeless shelters counselors drugs to control
his impulses stints in jail rehab centers He lived in apart-
ments with no furniture because everything had been pawned
to support his habit He missed his daughter People tried to
help himmdashhis mother a mentor friends Others brought him
down by their own bad habits His life was a spinning whirlpool
of helplessness in the cycles of addiction
ldquoThank God for my momrdquo Will says ldquolsquoYoursquoll always be my
sonrsquo she kept telling me She never gave up My dad he finally
had enough I canrsquot blame him But my mom ended up buying
me a ticket back to Great Falls where I stayed in a homeless
shelter got a job eventually got some helprdquo
ldquoIrsquove been gambling free and sober since October 12 2014rdquo
he says ldquoMy longest run ever Itrsquos hard I still sometimes miss
it but Irsquom on a mission now to do something about gambling inMontana Irsquom not naiumlve but itrsquos part of my recovery Irsquove started
a campaign Irsquom speaking publicly at libraries and Rotary
Clubs meeting with politicians sharing my story collecting the
stories of others
ldquoThis is my way of paying back On one level itrsquos also selfish
because it helps me stay free
ldquoMy goal is to stand in front of the 2017 Montana legislative
session and make a plea that 10 percent of gambling revenue be
set aside for treatment programs run by the state Right now the
state doesnrsquot put a dime into treatment
ldquoLook I understand that you arenrsquot going to stop gambling
ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos deep within our characterfrom frontier days part of the western tradition As long as itrsquos out
there we might as well fund worthy causes by taxing itrdquo
Will one of an estimated 10000 pathological gamblers in Montana sayshe wants to see the state divert some of its revenue toward treatment
options for people with gambling problems
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 89
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y 15
But when you put casinos on every corner poker machines in
every bar and gas station you are forcing a temptation on the
populace
ldquoAnd whorsquos in charge of treating problem gambling inMontanardquo he asks ldquoThe Montana Tavern Association Thatrsquos
who funds the problem gambling hotlinerdquo Actually the MTA is
joined by the Gaming Industry Association Town Pump and the
Montana Coin Machine Operators Association in that funding
pool but his point stands
Will qualifies as a pathological gambler Roughly 1 percent
of the general population falls into that category Another 3-4
percent are problem gamblers Sounds small but in Montana
with a million people wersquore looking at 10000 pathological
gamblers and perhaps 40000 with a problem Take Willrsquos life
and the troubles associated with it and imagine the personal and
social mayhem when you do that math Beyond that studies show
as much as 80 percent of problem gamblers never seek treatment
and remain off the public radar
ldquoLookrdquo says Mark Staples former lobbyist for the Montana
Tavern Association ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos
deep within our character from frontier days part of the westerntradition As long as itrsquos out there we might as well fund worthy
causes by taxing itrdquo
Rosenberry Bozemanrsquos finance direc-
tor agrees that perhaps gambling should
help pay for some of the social impacts
that come as a result of problems asso-
ciated with itmdashthings like court costs
criminal investigations jail time
ldquoIrsquove noticed that if you dig deepenough into cases of fraud or embezzle-
mentrdquo she says ldquoGambling is usually
somewhere in the picturerdquo
Gambling proponents tout the
employment boost provided by the indus-
try and the worthy causes funded as
a result of the tax collections Studies
on the long-term economic impacts of
gambling are more muddyA 2011 study headed by Douglas
Walker at the College of Charleston
South Carolina found that ldquoCasino
gambling has a short-run stimulus effect
but in the long-run hellip casinos actually
detract from state government revenues
perhaps due to a large substitution away
from other types of spendingrdquo
Coming to grips with accurate esti-
mates of the social costs of problem
gambling is a challenge There are five
or six studies out there that make the attempt including Walkerrsquos
but their numbers can differ by a factor of 10 Strict interpretations
of the direct costs of problem gambling come in as low as $2000
per year per gambler Those that take a more inclusive approachand incorporate things like missed days of work bankruptcy court
divorce court lost productivity hellip come in at nearly $20000 per
year
That same 1998 University of Montana study that quanti-
fied city funding through gaming also found statistical correla-
tions between gambling and vandalism burglary larceny DUIs
weapons offenses and robbery Beyond that how do you put
value on more slippery mundane stuff like mom not being home
at night to help children with homework or a kidrsquos malnutrition
because the food money went into the poker machine
Ray Rasker with Headwaters Economics cites Paul
Krugmanrsquos work on ldquoopportunity costsrdquo These are tangential to
the standard costbenefit tallies
ldquoIn the case of gamblingrdquo says Rasker ldquoYoursquod look at the
person who goes out and drops $300 in poker machines instead
of going to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a deck Or
take the family to dinner or go to Yellowstone National Park helliprdquoldquoEconomists talk about the loss of productivity in both time
and workrdquo says Rasker ldquoNever mind time spent with kids or
430ndash900 TUESndashSAT
212 W Park St | Depot Center | Livingston MT
CUSTOM HOLIDAY GIFT BASKETS
4062225418 | TheGourmetCellarcom
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 99
more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 79
14
for running a football pool trying to be Jimmy the Greek or
somethingrdquo
As Willrsquos story unfolds his hands move delicately around his
coffee mug He looks straight at me while revealing the depths of
his depravity His recovery demands this level of full confession
this unvarnished no-excuses litany of the ways his addiction to
gambling utterly dominated his life and choices
His saga careens from the Midwest to Santa Fe to Great
Falls and West Yellowstone Los Angeles and New Orleans
Minnesota and South Dakota His life was a repeating cycle of
new starts clean living and then some trigger setting him off
into a spiral of marathon gambling blackout drinking sprees
trouble with the law
Remarkably Will kept landing solid jobs managing restau-rants and bars working at hotels Along the way he fell in love
got married had a daughter But every time something would
pull him back down He robbed a hotel in Montana and set off
on a gambling spree to the West Coast He borrowed money from
a friend and lost it all in the slots He got in trouble with book-
ies always needed money Whenever he got some cash it would
all vanish into slots or sports betting or horseracing or scratch
cards didnrsquot matter whatever was on
ldquoOne time I blew an entire $1300 paycheck in eight hourson one machinerdquo he remembers
ldquoThe gambling industry isnrsquot making their big bucks off of
occasional recreational mom-and-pop gamers Itrsquos people like
me who feed $20 bills into the machines until theyrsquore all gonerdquo
Willrsquos marriage dissolved He found himself at various rock-
bottom points standing on a high dock outside of New Orleans
or holding a sharp knife in a Great Falls alley wanted nothing
more than to end his life but then lacking the will to go through
with it Once he drank a cocktail of bleach vodka cocaine andwhiskey but the neighbors called the police and rushed him to
the hospital
There were homeless shelters counselors drugs to control
his impulses stints in jail rehab centers He lived in apart-
ments with no furniture because everything had been pawned
to support his habit He missed his daughter People tried to
help himmdashhis mother a mentor friends Others brought him
down by their own bad habits His life was a spinning whirlpool
of helplessness in the cycles of addiction
ldquoThank God for my momrdquo Will says ldquolsquoYoursquoll always be my
sonrsquo she kept telling me She never gave up My dad he finally
had enough I canrsquot blame him But my mom ended up buying
me a ticket back to Great Falls where I stayed in a homeless
shelter got a job eventually got some helprdquo
ldquoIrsquove been gambling free and sober since October 12 2014rdquo
he says ldquoMy longest run ever Itrsquos hard I still sometimes miss
it but Irsquom on a mission now to do something about gambling inMontana Irsquom not naiumlve but itrsquos part of my recovery Irsquove started
a campaign Irsquom speaking publicly at libraries and Rotary
Clubs meeting with politicians sharing my story collecting the
stories of others
ldquoThis is my way of paying back On one level itrsquos also selfish
because it helps me stay free
ldquoMy goal is to stand in front of the 2017 Montana legislative
session and make a plea that 10 percent of gambling revenue be
set aside for treatment programs run by the state Right now the
state doesnrsquot put a dime into treatment
ldquoLook I understand that you arenrsquot going to stop gambling
ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos deep within our characterfrom frontier days part of the western tradition As long as itrsquos out
there we might as well fund worthy causes by taxing itrdquo
Will one of an estimated 10000 pathological gamblers in Montana sayshe wants to see the state divert some of its revenue toward treatment
options for people with gambling problems
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 89
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y 15
But when you put casinos on every corner poker machines in
every bar and gas station you are forcing a temptation on the
populace
ldquoAnd whorsquos in charge of treating problem gambling inMontanardquo he asks ldquoThe Montana Tavern Association Thatrsquos
who funds the problem gambling hotlinerdquo Actually the MTA is
joined by the Gaming Industry Association Town Pump and the
Montana Coin Machine Operators Association in that funding
pool but his point stands
Will qualifies as a pathological gambler Roughly 1 percent
of the general population falls into that category Another 3-4
percent are problem gamblers Sounds small but in Montana
with a million people wersquore looking at 10000 pathological
gamblers and perhaps 40000 with a problem Take Willrsquos life
and the troubles associated with it and imagine the personal and
social mayhem when you do that math Beyond that studies show
as much as 80 percent of problem gamblers never seek treatment
and remain off the public radar
ldquoLookrdquo says Mark Staples former lobbyist for the Montana
Tavern Association ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos
deep within our character from frontier days part of the westerntradition As long as itrsquos out there we might as well fund worthy
causes by taxing itrdquo
Rosenberry Bozemanrsquos finance direc-
tor agrees that perhaps gambling should
help pay for some of the social impacts
that come as a result of problems asso-
ciated with itmdashthings like court costs
criminal investigations jail time
ldquoIrsquove noticed that if you dig deepenough into cases of fraud or embezzle-
mentrdquo she says ldquoGambling is usually
somewhere in the picturerdquo
Gambling proponents tout the
employment boost provided by the indus-
try and the worthy causes funded as
a result of the tax collections Studies
on the long-term economic impacts of
gambling are more muddyA 2011 study headed by Douglas
Walker at the College of Charleston
South Carolina found that ldquoCasino
gambling has a short-run stimulus effect
but in the long-run hellip casinos actually
detract from state government revenues
perhaps due to a large substitution away
from other types of spendingrdquo
Coming to grips with accurate esti-
mates of the social costs of problem
gambling is a challenge There are five
or six studies out there that make the attempt including Walkerrsquos
but their numbers can differ by a factor of 10 Strict interpretations
of the direct costs of problem gambling come in as low as $2000
per year per gambler Those that take a more inclusive approachand incorporate things like missed days of work bankruptcy court
divorce court lost productivity hellip come in at nearly $20000 per
year
That same 1998 University of Montana study that quanti-
fied city funding through gaming also found statistical correla-
tions between gambling and vandalism burglary larceny DUIs
weapons offenses and robbery Beyond that how do you put
value on more slippery mundane stuff like mom not being home
at night to help children with homework or a kidrsquos malnutrition
because the food money went into the poker machine
Ray Rasker with Headwaters Economics cites Paul
Krugmanrsquos work on ldquoopportunity costsrdquo These are tangential to
the standard costbenefit tallies
ldquoIn the case of gamblingrdquo says Rasker ldquoYoursquod look at the
person who goes out and drops $300 in poker machines instead
of going to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a deck Or
take the family to dinner or go to Yellowstone National Park helliprdquoldquoEconomists talk about the loss of productivity in both time
and workrdquo says Rasker ldquoNever mind time spent with kids or
430ndash900 TUESndashSAT
212 W Park St | Depot Center | Livingston MT
CUSTOM HOLIDAY GIFT BASKETS
4062225418 | TheGourmetCellarcom
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 99
more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 89
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R L Y 15
But when you put casinos on every corner poker machines in
every bar and gas station you are forcing a temptation on the
populace
ldquoAnd whorsquos in charge of treating problem gambling inMontanardquo he asks ldquoThe Montana Tavern Association Thatrsquos
who funds the problem gambling hotlinerdquo Actually the MTA is
joined by the Gaming Industry Association Town Pump and the
Montana Coin Machine Operators Association in that funding
pool but his point stands
Will qualifies as a pathological gambler Roughly 1 percent
of the general population falls into that category Another 3-4
percent are problem gamblers Sounds small but in Montana
with a million people wersquore looking at 10000 pathological
gamblers and perhaps 40000 with a problem Take Willrsquos life
and the troubles associated with it and imagine the personal and
social mayhem when you do that math Beyond that studies show
as much as 80 percent of problem gamblers never seek treatment
and remain off the public radar
ldquoLookrdquo says Mark Staples former lobbyist for the Montana
Tavern Association ldquoGambling has always been with us Itrsquos
deep within our character from frontier days part of the westerntradition As long as itrsquos out there we might as well fund worthy
causes by taxing itrdquo
Rosenberry Bozemanrsquos finance direc-
tor agrees that perhaps gambling should
help pay for some of the social impacts
that come as a result of problems asso-
ciated with itmdashthings like court costs
criminal investigations jail time
ldquoIrsquove noticed that if you dig deepenough into cases of fraud or embezzle-
mentrdquo she says ldquoGambling is usually
somewhere in the picturerdquo
Gambling proponents tout the
employment boost provided by the indus-
try and the worthy causes funded as
a result of the tax collections Studies
on the long-term economic impacts of
gambling are more muddyA 2011 study headed by Douglas
Walker at the College of Charleston
South Carolina found that ldquoCasino
gambling has a short-run stimulus effect
but in the long-run hellip casinos actually
detract from state government revenues
perhaps due to a large substitution away
from other types of spendingrdquo
Coming to grips with accurate esti-
mates of the social costs of problem
gambling is a challenge There are five
or six studies out there that make the attempt including Walkerrsquos
but their numbers can differ by a factor of 10 Strict interpretations
of the direct costs of problem gambling come in as low as $2000
per year per gambler Those that take a more inclusive approachand incorporate things like missed days of work bankruptcy court
divorce court lost productivity hellip come in at nearly $20000 per
year
That same 1998 University of Montana study that quanti-
fied city funding through gaming also found statistical correla-
tions between gambling and vandalism burglary larceny DUIs
weapons offenses and robbery Beyond that how do you put
value on more slippery mundane stuff like mom not being home
at night to help children with homework or a kidrsquos malnutrition
because the food money went into the poker machine
Ray Rasker with Headwaters Economics cites Paul
Krugmanrsquos work on ldquoopportunity costsrdquo These are tangential to
the standard costbenefit tallies
ldquoIn the case of gamblingrdquo says Rasker ldquoYoursquod look at the
person who goes out and drops $300 in poker machines instead
of going to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a deck Or
take the family to dinner or go to Yellowstone National Park helliprdquoldquoEconomists talk about the loss of productivity in both time
and workrdquo says Rasker ldquoNever mind time spent with kids or
430ndash900 TUESndashSAT
212 W Park St | Depot Center | Livingston MT
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4062225418 | TheGourmetCellarcom
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
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more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau
7252019 Cash Cow and a Sack of Heartache
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcash-cow-and-a-sack-of-heartache 99
more positive activities Those are real costs but tough to put a
dollar figure onrdquo
ldquoI used to work out in a gym that was right next to a casinordquo
Rasker remembers ldquoIrsquod come out after my workout an hourspent with people committed to being fit and see that line of
folks heading in to gamble Middle of the morning Beautiful
day What a contrastrdquo
Treatment for problem gambling in Montana is both complex
and in its infancy Eleanor Wend Licensed Addiction Counselor
for Alcohol and Drug Services of Gallatin County decries the
lack of funding It wasnrsquot until 2013 that Montana started to
include gambling as an addiction and people who seek treat-
ment still have to pay out of pocket for services
ldquoWe developed lotteries installed machines encouraged
casinos before we understood the ramificationsrdquo Wend says
Part of whatrsquos complicated about gambling addiction is that it
is often a web of issues co-occurring with drug and alcohol use
and strongly correlated with PTSD
Wend refers to studies that found the same areas of the brain
lighting up in response to gambling stimulation as with cocaine
use Some military veterans and other victims of PTSD lock intogaming machines as an outgrowth of life traumas and out of the
need to escape their reality Wend reports
ldquoItrsquos about isolationrdquo says Rory Berigan director of the
Fellowship Hall in Bozeman which sees a constant flow of 600
people per week attending various support groups from Gamblers
Anonymous to AA from sex addicts to binge shoppers
ldquoWhen people are sitting in front of those machines they are
gone they have left their bodies And the sad thing is that some
people really need that escaperdquo she saysRetired cop Rick Gale who works in drug prevention in
Gallatin County mentions the push by casinos to build ldquobutt
hutsrdquo outside of no-smoking establishments as an example of the
unrelenting effort to capitalize on weakness
ldquoThey propose building this lean-to shelter that is technically
not a building and installing gaming machines so you donrsquot
have to take a break when you go outside for a smokerdquo he says
Gale talks about the conf luence of drugs alcohol and
gambling at casinos where young people gather late at night toescape the notice of law enforcement and make drug deals or
indulge their bad habits while risking the seduction of gambling
addiction
ldquoThere are people leaving their kids in the car in the middle
of the night while they go into a casinordquo adds Wend ldquoYou hear
of casinos sending buses to assisted living facilities the same
day that residents get their Social Security checks They bring
them to the casino They feed them They give them free drinks
And then they take their moneyrdquoldquoAt some pointrdquo says Gale ldquoYou start to ask yourselfmdashwhat
are we doingrdquo
16
How It Plays OutA glance at fourth-quarter fiscal year 2015 video game machine tax revenues
City Revenue +- $ per resident
Belgrade $202185 +1 $259 3
Billings $264558 8 +1 $2430
Bozeman $47766 8 -1 $1147
Columbia Falls $174553 +6 $3723
Deer Lodge $89374 +6 $2873
Dillon $86942 +5 $2103
Glendive $182952 -23 $2613
Great Falls $1307494 -4 $2210
Hamilton $194618 -6 $4476
Havre $232013 -5 $2492Helena $741060 -8 $2475
Kalispell $605939 -9 $2816
Laurel $21323 7 +11 $3074
Lewist own $118254 -10 $2016
Livingston $159412 +5 $2200
Miles City $263024 -6 $3003
Missoula $1144401 +3 $1639
Sidney $273047 -23 $4218
Whitefi sh $107721 -11 $1569
mdashfrom the fourth quarter in 2014mdashbased on the most recent Census population estimate
Sources Montana Department of Justice US Census Bureau