Opinion | An Alabama town has its asset frozen because our gambling laws are ridiculous

It’s time we stopped pretending that there isn’t a problem with Alabama’s gambling laws. 

Every year, it seems, especially around the time the legislature shows up to work, we start a conversation about gambling legislation. About legalizing this or creating new laws for that. And inevitably, as this argument unfolds, there is the contention from some folks that Alabama’s gambling laws are just fine, they only need to be enforced properly or stiffer penalties applied. 

It’s nonsense. Just ask the people of Lipscomb. 

Situated just north of Bessemer in Jefferson County, the small town of about 2,000 people suddenly can’t pay its city employees, including police and firefighters, because it is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. 

According to a number of residents in Lipscomb, agents from Marshall’s office conducted a raid on Thursday of Jay’s Charity Bingo – an electronic bingo hall in the town. Additionally, Marshall’s office filed suit against the bingo hall and named the town as a defendant as well. A judge then froze all city assets, including money in bank accounts, until a proper review of the assets could determine if they were connected to the bingo halls. 

Those funds almost certainly are, since the bingo halls – there are four of them altogether in the small town – are the town’s only true source of tax revenue. 

Mayor Tonja Baldwin told al.com on Saturday that the town cannot pay its employees and will likely miss payroll on Tuesday – two days prior to Thanksgiving – because of the freeze on the city’s accounts – a matter which will be rectified, at the earliest, at a Dec. 2 hearing. 

Marshall’s filing, as is typically the case in such gambling lawsuits filed by the AG, focuses on the fact that the Alabama Supreme Court has determined that electronic bingo is illegal in Alabama. It has mandated that the game of bingo can only be played on paper cards and that other forms – particularly the forms resembling slot machines – are illegal to operate in Alabama. 

So, with that being the case, it might seem that this is a classic instance of a town’s leadership suffering because of its own dumb decisions. But let’s add some context here. 

First off, the City of Lipscomb has been issuing permits for bingo halls (including halls offering electronic games) since at least 2012. And the halls have been present in the city even before that time. 

There are dozens of such bingo halls scattered around Jefferson County, many of which are fully operational today. Additionally, several other towns in Jefferson County have been issuing bingo hall permits. 

Why is this taking place? 

Because numerous judges and law enforcement officials in several counties around Alabama believe that the Supreme Court is simply wrong (and motivated by politics instead of good legal arguments). They believe that the constitutional amendment process that their counties undertook to pass bingo amendments are the ultimate determining factor and that they cannot be undone by any judge, even the justices of the Alabama Supreme Court. 

And to be fair, they have a point. The ALSC attempting to overturn bingo amendments is akin to it trying to overturn amendments for alcohol sales. Imagine the outrage if the justices tried to claim that a vote of the people to allow alcohol sales didn’t matter because they determined that the only alcohol that can be sold in Alabama is rubbing alcohol. That’s almost as ludicrous as the ALSC saying bingo can’t be played electronically, even as it’s being played electronically in Native American casinos all over the country. 

But here’s the other rub specific to Lipscomb: Marshall appears to have entered this fight only because he was invited. 

Again, the town has been issuing these bingo permits for more than a dozen years. But it wasn’t until earlier this year, after a public spat between the Lipscomb mayor and some council members resulted in the council members reaching out to the AG’s office on the matter. 

Now, I’m not knocking Marshall or the people in his office for this. This problem is so widespread, and the alleged crimes so petty (these are all misdemeanors) that the AG can’t have his office running around investigating every instance of alleged illegal gambling, especially when he’s likely going to be fighting local law enforcement, local town leaders and local judges over the matter. 

But then again, that all creates an environment of uneven enforcement. 

Particularly when you still have electronic bingo halls operating in Lowndes, Houston, Jefferson, Greene, Walker, Montgomery and Marshall counties, just to name a few of the more well known spots. That’s to say nothing of the makeshift casinos/bingo halls that pop up in gas stations, beauty salons, restaurants, abandoned storefronts and random barns in rural areas. 

My point is this: We’ve got a problem. 

We’ve got unregulated gambling establishments by the dozen getting licenses from various municipalities and being raided randomly by the AG’s office. The raids are typically ineffective and useless in the long run, and they’ve done nothing to deter the operation of these outfits. That’s probably because literally tens of millions of dollars are running through these places on a weekly basis, making them all astoundingly lucrative. 

Unless you’re the state of Alabama. 

In which case, the dumb laws we have in place only serve to leave the AG’s office chasing its tail over misdemeanor crimes, spending probably about as much as it recovers in fines and seizures. We get nothing in state taxes from most of these places and many of them, as local law enforcement officials will tell you, are funding other types of criminal behavior. 

It’s a problem. And the first step in fixing it is admitting such.