The vetting process for deciding who gets casino licenses is "broken," and the state attorney general and police should lead it in the future, state House Republicans said Monday.
Their complaints came a day before Mount Airy Casino owner Louis DeNaples was scheduled to appear before the state Gaming Control Board to try to win back his casino license. The board suspended DeNaples' license last week when he was charged with perjury.
The Dauphin County district attorney charges DeNaples lied to the gaming board about his ties to two reputed mob figures and two other men at the center of a federal corruption investigation in Philadelphia.
State police knew about a conversation recorded on a federal wiretap tying DeNaples, a Scranton businessman, to Samsud-din Ali and the late Ron White, who are being investigated in a corruption probe involving Philadelphia City Hall, according to Dauphin County District Attorney Edward Marsico Jr.
Police did not pass that along to gaming board investigators, however, for fear of compromising the federal investigation.
"What you have right now is a complete gap in communication," said Rep. Douglas Reichley, R-Allentown. Reichley co-sponsored a Republican bill seeking to make the attorney general and state police responsible for checking the background of anyone who wants to own a casino in Pennsylvania.
The gambling law, passed in 2004, makes the Gaming Control Board responsible for background checks. It doesn't give board members the same legal authority as the state police or attorney general when it comes to getting applicants' personal information, though.
No matter who oversees the background check, information about an ongoing criminal investigation could not be given to a civilian board, said David Kwait, director of the gaming board's Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement.
"Every other (state with legal gambling) does the same thing," Kwait said. "We license based on the provable facts we have at the moment."
State police wouldn't even tell gaming board members that there was a "problem" with an applicant, for fear of jeopardizing the investigation, said state police spokesman Jack Kelly. If they did, however, it would likely be legal, he said.
House minority leader Sam Smith, R-Punxsutawney, and Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, urged fellow lawmakers to open the gaming board's licensing process to public scrutiny. The board still hasn't explained how Don Barden, owner of the Majestic Star Casino being built on the North Shore, was chosen over two other applicants.
"This is a black eye on Pennsylvania," said Piccola, who called a secret licensing process tantamount to "hanging out a (welcome) sign to organized crime."
Even in a public process, DeNaples likely would've gotten the license, Kwait said.
"Unindicted and unprosecuted information in files doesn't cut it," Kwait said. Using that information against someone "denies them the right of due process."
If convicted, DeNaples, a Scranton businessman, would lose the license awarded him in December 2006. Mount Airy opened in the Poconos in October and has since made nearly $38 million, 55 percent of which has gone to pay state taxes.
The indictment, coming a little more than a year after the state's first slot machine casino opened, creates "a cloud" of "public mistrust" over the industry, said state Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery County, who co-sponsored the background check bill.
The bill hasn't moved since being assigned to the House Gaming Oversight Committee in September. House Republicans threatened to use a "discharge petition" to force the bill onto the floor for a vote if the committee doesn't act on it soon.
Such a move requires 25 co-sponsors -- the background check bill has 36 -- and, after 15 days, can bring a bill out of committee without that committee voting on it.
Reichley said that is "very much a last resort."
"We are not calling out the Democrats, saying, 'You're allowing this to happen,' " Vereb said. The bill is about procedure, he said. "It's broken. Let's fix it."
