Aug. 1, 2001 – Telephones at Government House have been ringing off the hook in response to the media blitz over the video lottery terminal gaming issue. "We've had dozens of calls already today," Rina Jacobs McBrowne, Government House spokeswoman, said Wednesday afternoon. "They're still coming in."
The phones also rang all day Tuesday, and their message was near-unanimous. "We had no calls in favor of the VLT's yesterday, and only one this morning," McBrowne said. "One caller said, 'If the governor doesn't veto the VLT's, we'll veto him'," she said with a laugh.
The callers are irate, according to McBrowne. "It has become a very emotional issue."
"The calls are short and angry," she said, saying senators "didn't pay any attention to them about reducing the size of the Senate, and now they are trying to push the VLT's." The callers are vehemently against video lottery terminals, McBrowne said, "They say the don't want them — ever — and that they will bring no money to the territory."
Gov. Charles W. Turnbull apparently must decide in the next two days whether to sign the enabling legislation, which is a part of his massively amended supplemental appropriations bill, or line-item veto it, or let it become law without his signature. He is scheduled to attend the 2001 National Governors Association Conference in Providence, R.I., from Saturday through Tuesday, McBrowne said, although she didn't have confirmation from the governor of his travel dates Wednesday afternoon.
"The governor has been working on it around the clock," she said of the voluminous appropriations bill passed by the Senate on July 19. By law he has until Aug. 8 to act on the measure.
Print newspapers and the broadcast media have been inundated by a campaign by Austin Advertising promoting Southland Gaming of the V.I., the company contracted by the V.I. Lottery Commission three years ago to install and operate the territory's VLT's. One ad says, "Want $20 million? Video lottery will bring in an extra $20 million a year to our government revenues." It gives the Government House phone number, to "call and let the governor know you support the lottery."
Another radio spot features a heavily accented speaker calling himself a cruise ship crew member and asking to be allowed to "have fun spending [his] money here."
A letter to Turnbull from Divi Carina Bay Casino employees urging him to veto the VLT legislation appeared as a full-page ad in Wednesday's issue of The Avis newspaper.
On Tuesday, Austin Advertising distributed to the news media what was labeled an amendment to the original contact between the V.I. Lottery and Southland Gaming. The original contract language provided for the installation of lottery terminals "in airports, racetracks, bars, taverns, nightclubs, restaurants, resorts, hotels and other retail establishments." The amendment keeps that language for St. Thomas and St. John but restricts the terminals' set-up on St. Croix to "not more than two entertainment centers," one in Frederiksted and one in Christiansted, plus the departure lounge at the Henry L. Rohlsen Airport, horse race tracks and horse race simulcast parlors.
It also provides for not more than five such "entertainment centers" in the St. Thomas-St. John district and specifies that each "shall contain not less than 50 operating VLT's at the start-up of the individual entertainment center."
The amendment states that the specified types of installation locations cannot be changed for the next five years without approval of the Legislature, nor can the company establish additional "entertainment centers" without such approval. Implicit in this language is that changes could be made if the Legislature approved them.
One concern of opponents of the video lottery bill is the prospect of the gaming legislation being subject to change at what the Casino Control Commission chair, Eileen Petersen, has called "the whim of the Legislature."
Petersen has stressed that unstable gaming legislation is a hugh red light to potential casino investors.
Source telephone calls to Austin Andrews, V.I. Lottery Commission executive director, seeking information on the matter have gone unreturned since last week.
