Kansas is looking at the potential of expanding an industry that promises $200 million in new revenue to the state and hundreds of jobs that pay between $30,000 to $50,000 annually.

Support, however, is divided because the industry isn’t bioscience or technology, but gambling.

The Legislature has wrestled with the issue for more than 10 years. Even in the final days of the current session, there may be a last-minute vote to expand gambling in Kansas.

Advocates are convinced that expanded gambling would be an economic engine that could ease the state’s school financing problems without forcing the Legislature to raise taxes.

Opponents argue that addiction and other social consequences would ensue and take its toll on individuals and families.

Ironically, many of the advocates would agree.

Consider Matt All, chief counsel to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and her frontman on gaming.

When All talks about the subject, he often begins with phrases like “Although we’re not crazy about gaming : “

He said the objective of a limited expansion of gaming centered on destination casinos.

“We don’t think that gaming for gaming’s sake is going to be good for Kansas. But we do think that if it is expanded in a limited, responsible way that it actually can do a lot of good,” All said.

All said gambling was one part of a larger revenue package that, over time, would have to be developed. That larger package would likely include programs to “create jobs, encourage investment and promote growth,” he said. “Gaming, if done the right way, can be one part of that.”

Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, said there were a lot of Kansans who liked to gamble and many already gamble online, at American Indian casinos, at the casinos in Kansas City, Mo., and other neighboring states.

With all the gambling that’s already going on, Brungardt said, Kansas ought to capture some of that revenue and create a tourist attraction.

“Gambling is a means to an end,” Brungardt said. “It’s a tool we can use. We increase development, we build better restaurants, if you can envision it that way – adding a classy casino hotel – it gives opportunities to spin off other positive things.”

Short-term solution

The Legislature has struggled with ways to satisfy the Kansas Supreme Court’s order to increase school funding.

The solution, at least for the governor and several lawmakers, was to allow the creation of gambling casinos and slot machines in different parts of the state.

Several legislators offered different gambling bills during the 2006 session that differed on the scope of gambling expansion, the types of gambling allowed, the amount of revenue the state would garner and the way that revenue would be split between public schools and other needs.

The governor, among other gaming supporters, supported casino development in just a few places: near Cabela’s sporting goods store in Wyandotte County, in the southeast part of the state, near Branson, Mo., and the expanding casino area near eastern Oklahoma.

Those sites, and possibly casinos that American Indian tribes may want to enhance, would likely be the only casinos in the state.

The pro-gaming side

Gaming expansion proponents said they were focused on the added revenue, and they frame the expansion of gambling as a vehicle toward increased tourism and an anchor for economic development.

Revenue estimate figures from proposed legislation during the last session have estimated annual state revenue to be between $150 million and $200 million.

Adding slot machines to racetracks has been added to some bills considered by the Legislature this session. In some proposals, a large share of slot revenues would go to the state.

That revenue, with increases in other tax revenues that come to the state from an expanding economy, would come close to providing an additional $400 million to $600 million that could go to the state’s public schools, satisfying a state Supreme Court order that the Legislature pass a bill to appropriately fund public education.

The court had accepted a $290 million increase last year as a down payment on another increase guided by a cost study done by the Legislative Division of Post Audit.

That cost study said schools would need a minimum of $400 million for a realistic budget.

Gaming opponents

Sen. Roger Reitz, R-Manhattan, opposes expanded gambling.

“I don’t think this is good for Kansas, and my constituency is the state of Kansas,” Reitz said. “You can be permissive about this, but I think the state will be much worse for my children and grandchildren. And once we do this, we can never go back.”

Reitz is a family physician at a clinic near the Kansas State University campus. He said that expanded gaming in the state would increase the risk of also expanding gambling addiction, which is treated at his clinic.

He claims gaming produces low-paying, dead-end jobs and hurts other entertainment, including K-State sports.

“I just paid $800 for tickets for K-State football, but people may have to give that up if the gambling rush is more interesting than watching K-State lose another football game,” Reitz said.

One of the worst effects of expanded gaming, Reitz said, is the misguided belief that the public school funding problem would be solved. He said that the state’s bill for the federal government’s No Child Left Behind program, which began in 2002 and requires the nation’s public schools to increase test scores, would far outstrip gambling revenues’ ability to pay.

Glenn Thompson, executive director of Stand Up For Kansas, a Wichita-based anti-gambling group, said that as many as 1.5 percent of adults in the state would become gambling addicts. That would translate into 5,000 pathological gamblers in the city of Wichita alone, he said.

Thompson said that pathological gamblers cost society $13,000 annually in lost productivity, increased health costs and crime.

“If we need money for education, we need taxes,” Thompson said. “Even suggesting that we need gambling money, well, that’s insulting. How can you educate your children to think gambling is wrong if you use gambling money to support it?”

The future?

William Thompson is a professor of public administration at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas who studies gaming.

Thompson said casino jobs were careers, and he estimated that casino dealers in Kansas would make between $30,000 and $50,000 annually. Most other workers in casinos could expect as much as $12 per hour with benefits.

Thompson said the benefits of a casino along with a major hotel would help ensure that Kansans gamble in the state instead of traveling to Missouri or elsewhere. More importantly, he said, these facilities also would attract tourists.

Thompson said Kansas would have to create some excitement and be serious about attracting tourists with these businesses.

Editor’s note: Students at Kansas State University’s A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications researched and wrote the initial drafts of this story. The students are Christian Boyle, Preston Koerner, Adam Mowder, Heath Fanning, Kelsey Cook, Bethany Fox, Erin Schafer and Amy Seematter. Faculty advisers are Lori Bergen and Tom Grimes.