Punchboards And Pull Tabs... What Have We Got To Lose?

Not everyone, it appeared, liked my idea of easing the city's budget crisis by bringing back limited, small-time, harmless, recreational, teenie-weenie . . . gambling.

The nonbelievers included callers and letter writers who figured a few games of chance on a punchboard or pull tab were a sure step toward Sodom, if not Gomorrah.

"You'll have organized crime on you!" a lady shouted. "Police will be corrupted! Lives destroyed!

"I mean, look what bingo does to a family."

She had me there. I could picture my grandmother Ruby, a Keno maniac, night after night lugging home her winnings, cans of Carnation Evaporated Milk. It was a pitiful sight for, as she said, the stuff didn't mix at all well with her bourbon.

Then there was that editorial in My Very Own Newspaper, giving the idea one long, loud harrump.

The writer tut-tutted the punchboard/pull-tab idea, noting with great alarm that gambling once was at the heart of Seattle's police-payoff scandal of yore, but failing to note it was caused by illegally tolerated, wide-open, unregulated gambling - nothing of the sort we're suggesting here.

Either way, the editorialist wrote, "making major law revisions because of financial crises is bad policy."

There you have it. When you've got a big problem - such as having to cut city services and reduce the police force - don't come up with big solutions. Baaaad policy, that.

I am under the impression, however, that not everybody agrees with that.

Among them may be a majority of the City Council, which now has a limited-gambling proposal in the works.

Introduced by Councilman Tom Weeks a few days back, the plan would be to legalize punchboards and pull tabs, bringing in an estimated $4 million in taxes to the city.

Again, punchboards and pull tabs only, regulated by the state, legal almost everywhere else in Washington, raising taxes from people willing to pay them.

There would be no card rooms, roulette wheels, slot machines or horse races through downtown Seattle. Punchboards and pull tabs, 50 cents a shot.

Of that four bits, the city would get 5 percent. Though Weeks estimates that could bring in as much as $7 million, Lois Mason of the Licensed Beverage Association told me it could be as much as $12 million.

For sure, it would be double or triple the take in the county, where gambling is legal but there are fewer bars.

"Last year," Linda Nelsen of the King County Finance Division said yesterday, "we brought in about $2.4 million.

"That includes bingo, raffles that sort of thing. But most of the money comes from punchboards, pull tabs and card rooms."

Among the willing contributors to the county's public coffers is Sam Lantow, owner of the Hide-A-Way Tavern.

His place is basically a card-room operation now, and though that wouldn't be legal under the city's proposed ordinance, he figures his annual tax on gross from card games puts up to $40,000 into King County's pocket.

But Lantow previously had punchboards and pull tabs at the tavern, and they contributed $6,000 or so to the county's annual tax income.

"The only reason we took (the boards and pull-tab machines) out is because the state changed the liquor law, limiting how much you could make gambling in comparison with how much food and liquor you sold," Lantow said.

"We preferred to balance it by taking out the boards and keeping the card room since it's a bigger money maker.

"I've been here 15 years," Lantow added, "and we've never had to call the cops once. Gambling on this scale, cards or boards, is just not a problem for anyone."

Actually, Lantow said, the only reason he bought the tavern was because it had a good location - in the county, where gambling was legal.

"I don't know how some of those guys (taverns in the city) make it without even punchboards. It keeps businesses alive, not only with the gambling proceeds but the increase in bar sales.

"People come in here and say they just left another place down the street because they wanted to gamble a little."

And he means literally down the street.

The address of Lantow's tavern is 14525 Aurora Ave. N. "We're three doors this side of the city limits," Lantow said. "You can walk here from Seattle."

Three doors, and thousands of dollars, away.

Rick Anderson's column appears Tuesday and Thursday on the Neighborhoods page and Saturday on A 2 of The Times.