Federal gambling study to look at South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Government investigators are firming up plans to visit South Carolina for a federal audit to examine how gambling has altered two communities -- one in South Carolina and Atlantic City, N.J.

Officials with the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, want to spend several days here this fall to study its $2.8 billion video gambling industry.

Details are being worked out and the agency has not settled on a specific South Carolina community, but Myrtle Beach, Charleston and Columbia are being considered, said John Baldwin, a GAO assistant director overseeing the audit.

The American Gaming Association said the effort was being driven by one anti-lawmaker on a quest to tarnish the industry.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., "is looking for somewhere where somebody is going to be able to say something bad about gambling," said association President Frank Fahrenkopf. "So where are you going to go? To South Carolina."

The state's video gambling industry is largely unregulated and unlike any other state's, he said.

A message left at Wolf's congressional office was not returned. Spokesmen for U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said they were unaware of the study.

Gov. Jim Hodges' office also did not know about the study, said his spokeswoman, Nina Brook.

"If the federal government decides to come to South Carolina to do this we would look forward to working with them and reading the federal government's report," she said.

Baldwin said it would be a "before-and-after look" at how gambling has changed communities and at whether whether local governments may have offered subsidies to attract casinos.

GAO officials spent several days in Atlantic City in July looking at things like tax revenue and jobs created by gambling, the number of people in homeless shelters and on welfare, crime rates and prostitution.

Las Vegas was to be the other case study, but officials wanted to broaden their look with a community that has gambling centers not considered primarily tourist attractions, Baldwin said.

This year's report by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission held up South Carolina as an example of how not to handle the industry.

The 200-page report, released in June, said South Carolina's 34,000 machines were more than any other state. Unlike casinos, video gambling brings few significant economic benefits, it said.

Baldwin said the GAO study should be finished early next year and would not duplicate the commission's report, which he said had "general observations and conclusions."

In another development, the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce said two radio ads will begin airing across the state Monday opposing video gambling in advance of a Nov. 2 referendum in which voters will decide whether the games remain legal.

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