Collateral Damage

In war casualties are often referred to as "collateral damage". Here is a story about how casino gambling has "helped" an Iowa town but see if you can find the "collateral damage" left behind by this "success" story. The story is from an Allentown, Pennsylvania newspaper discussing the newly created slot machine bill which will be implemented in 14 Pennsylvania towns in the next two years.

One city's jackpot is neighbor's bust

Decade of casinos shows host town in Iowa reaps benefits but region shares in gambling's woes.

A river town settled by religious immigrants found itself at a crossroads. Its industry once a cornerstone to the nation's economy had collapsed, leaving thousands of fathers without the jobs they thought they could pass on to their sons.

Then deep-pocketed casino operators arrived, promising to make things better. They could deliver thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in investment dollars if city leaders would just allow them to bring gambling to town.

This is not Bethlehem.

It's Council Bluffs, Iowa, where, with most of the railroad jobs gone and the tax base flat, city leaders agonized through the same gambling debate in the mid-1990s that Bethlehem is going through today.

As gambling celebrates its 10-year anniversary in Council Bluffs, the Missouri River town settled by Mormons in the mid-1800s may hold answers for Pennsylvania communities debating the arrival of casinos.

No, gambling did not bring organized crime, prostitutes or riff-raff to Council Bluffs' streets.

Yes, the almost nine million people that 4,000 slot machines lure to town each year have brought almost runaway economic development, booming housing growth and thousands of new construction, service and retail jobs.

Whether gambling in Council Bluffs is considered a success depends on who is doing the judging.

What has become a $430 million-a-year industry for this city of 60,000 also has unmasked hundreds (maybe a bit of an understatement) of addicted gamblers in the community, increased petty crime, helped run some family restaurants out of business, increased bankruptcies statewide and irritated its neighbors across the river in Omaha, Neb.

In Council Bluffs, where residents enjoy the benefits of their new senior center, a library four times the size of their previous one and more than $1 billion worth of development since the casinos opened, the answer from most people to whether gambling has been a success is a resounding yes.

Just across the river — nearly as close as Allentown is to Bethlehem — where Omaha's blossoming skyline has for years cast a shadow of superiority over Council Bluffs, some residents are angry: angry that more than 70 percent of the people who drop money in Council Bluffs slot machines are from Nebraska, while most of the benefits of gambling remain on the Iowa side of the Missouri. Angry that Omaha residents who could be spending their disposable income in Omaha restaurants and businesses are losing it in Council Bluffs.

And they are angry that despite rejecting gambling in their city, they are forced to share a border with a ''casino town.''

''We're not a casino town,'' shoots back Council Bluffs Mayor Tom Hanafan to anyone who criticizes his decision to embrace gambling. ''We're survivors.''

It's that same philosophical face-off that has been raging in Bethlehem for months. During public meetings attended by as many as 700 people, church group members, some of whose descendants settled Bethlehem, quoted the Bible and begged City Council to ban gambling in the city.

Competing for one of 14 gambling licenses to be issued statewide as early as next year would be foolish and immoral, they said. The slots parlor would suck the life from local businesses and bring crime. Their beloved Christmas City would never be the same. It would become a casino town, they warned. On the other side of the aisle were out-of-work steel workers who pleaded for city leaders to use gambling as a tool. Use it to preserve the vacant remnants of Bethlehem Steel's south Bethlehem plant. Use the draw of gambling to replace the jobs lost when the steel giant closed. Gambling, they argued, would help them survive.

''Right now, I think we're making a mistake because this has the potential to change our city for the worse,'' said Bethlehem Councilman Gordon Mowrer, a Moravian minister and former city mayor whose proposal to ban gambling through a zoning change failed by a council vote of 4-3.

''Some day, I hope I can look back on this and say I was wrong.

''Today, Council Bluffs residents have a decade of casino life to look back on. Perhaps the best assessment of that time was cast in the voting booth. In 2002, when Iowa residents were asked whether they wanted gambling to stay in their state as they will be asked every eight years under Iowa law 79 percent voted yes.

Meanwhile, last year in neighboring Nebraska, 65 percent of the voters rejected a plan to build two casinos in Omaha to prevent gambling money from flowing into Council Bluffs. The failed campaign to bring gambling to Nebraska was led by Las Vegas Sands, the same casino operator proposing a $300 million casino and hotel complex for south Bethlehem.

Nebraska gambling opponents and Council Bluffs residents both celebrated the vote.

Railroad town

The tangle of tracks snaking through the center of Council Bluffs lay as a monument to a proud past, when 15 railroad companies employed thousands of residents and dominated the city's blue-collar economy for a century.