Cuomo to boost gambling, cut treatment

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is counting on New Yorkers to gamble a lot more in the coming fiscal year so the state can make extra cash off its expanding games of chance — from lottery tickets to slot machines at racetracks.

But he also plans to cut the number of facilities run by not-for-profit agencies that counsel addicts and help educate the public about gambling problems. Treatment experts say that will reduce assistance for the growing number of problem gamblers following the state’s decade-plus march to give bettors more places to risk their money.

“I understand New York is in debt. I get it,” said Marlene Schillinger, president of Jewish Family Service of Buffalo and Erie County, which provides treatment for gambling addicts. “But building up any type of gambling venue while reducing the resources to treat those people ... is unconscionable,” she said.

The Cuomo plan envisions more than $350 million in additional revenues over the next couple of years through expanded gambling.
While Cuomo’s proposed budget is laced with deep spending cuts for agencies and as many as 9,800 state worker layoffs, it calls for adding 50 full-time marketing and sales staffers at the state Lottery Division to introduce gambling into more stores, bars and other outlets across the state.

One new push involves getting lottery games into the major national drugstore chains. Such “sales efficiency actions” are budgeted to bring the state an extra $100 million this year.

The games also will expand.

Restrictions on Quick Draw, which treatment counselors say is especially addictive, would be removed, allowing more bars and other outlets to offer it. The minimum age for playing the game in bars would drop from 21 to 18.

At racetrack casinos, such as those in Hamburg and Batavia, bettors would get more “free play,” a promotional giveaway that ends up luring more paid bets and increases net machine income, a portion of which goes to the state.

Racetrack casino bettors also would be allowed to use their electronic screens to wager on multiple-state lottery games, such as Mega Millions, which shares proceeds with the state.

The state, meanwhile, would earn an additional $8 million over the next couple of years by increasing to five from three the number of bigger payback and more expensive scratch-off lottery games.

Yet the Cuomo budget calls for reducing the state’s 41 gambling education, assessment and referral programs. It also would delay plans for five gambling prevention programs and three recovery community centers.

“It’s a clear and very convincing decision on the part of government that we’re willing to sacrifice a percentage of our population because they’re going to go gamble and we’re going to get money and that this will be profitable for us and fill budget holes,” said Amherst Town Justice Mark Farrell, who nine years ago started the nation’s first gambling treatment court.

“Too bad for the poor schmuck who has a gambling problem and pulls a gun out and shoots himself,” the judge said.

The budget does not make clear how the cuts would affect current programs in Western New York, said Jim Maney, executive director of the New York State Council on Problem Gambling, which is neutral on gambling but advocates education and treatment about gambling addictions.

Cuomo’s plan to increase gambling but cut services to help compulsive gamblers is “a double whammy,” Maney told The Buffalo News.

As it ratcheted up gambling venues with new Indian-owned and racetrack casinos in recent years, the state also sought to enact certain safeguards, such as restrictions on Quick Draw and more money for treatment programs, he said.

“All this started out to protect the public. Now we’re just wiping them out without any concern for the public or problem gambling in New York,” Maney said of the help for treatment agencies.

The proposed provisions were “not an attempt to increase gambling,” said Robert Megna, the governor’s budget director. But with a projected deficit of $10 billion and cuts in education, health care and other programs, they were designed to “maximize the revenue” from the lottery agency, he said.

The vast majority of New Yorkers can gamble without serious problems, treatment experts say, but those addicted often turn to crime to fuel their gambling habits, or to bankruptcy or suicide, said Farrell, the Amherst judge.

Treatment advocates say the equation is simple: More gambling opportunities equals more problem gamblers.

The state’s own data, Maney noted, has shown that 10 percent of adolescents have gambling problems and another 10 percent are at risk of developing gambling addictions.

“We’re talking about a significant addiction,” said Farrell, who has been consulted by other states and countries seeking to establish gambling treatment courts. More experts look at compulsive gambling as a behavioral addiction, which is often co-addicted with drugs or alcohol.

Farrell said he routinely sees people in his Amherst courtroom with gambling addiction problems related to lottery games or the local racetrack casinos.

He called the governor’s plan to reduce help for problem gamblers while increasing the state’s reliance on gambling revenues “a clear decision to put dollars before addiction and place the economic balance sheet before human services.”