Casino Shutdown

With appeal lost, casinos start planning for shutdown

By THOMAS BARLAS Staff Writer, (609) 272-7201
Published: Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Updated: Tuesday, July 4, 2006

ATLANTIC CITY — There will be no tear gas. Dogs won’t be turned loose. Paddy wagons won’t cart away scores of gamblers reluctant to let go of their favorite one-armed bandits.
The hope is that the unprecedented shutdown of gambling at the city’s casinos — scheduled for 8 a.m. Wednesday — will be calm, orderly and without any problems.
Casinos will turn in part to closing plans originally developed to deal with things such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. They’ll follow specific steps to secure money and keys to hard-count rooms and gaming-table drop boxes. Continued surveillance will help make sure that nobody places a bet at a table game or slips a coin into a slot machine — or even crosses the gaming floor — after the closing deadline.
Perhaps the hardest job will be to get customers off the gaming floor by 8 a.m.
That will be primarily the job of casino security staff, which have reportedly undergone briefings on the issue since Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed an executive order that shut down state government after he and the Legislature couldn’t agree on a budget by the constitutional deadline of midnight June 30. Corzine considers state Division of Gaming Enforcement inspectors, who must be present in the gaming halls for gambling to proceed, to be nonessential state employees.
But at least 100 DGE inspectors and uniformed State Police officers will be on hand to back up casino security Wednesday morning. They’ll meet at about 6 a.m. at DGE headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue to get a last minute briefing from DGE Director Tom Auriemma before heading to the casinos.
“It’s not like we’re going to arrest anybody,” Auriemma said. “The goal is to ensure an orderly exit.”
A gambling shutdown is not what the casinos want, and casino officials worked the state court system on Monday in hopes of staying open.
Their efforts were unsuccessful, as both an appellate court and the state Superior Court on Monday denied their request to keep gaming operations running. State Supreme Court Associate Justice James Zazzali said simply that the casinos had not “established sufficient grounds for relief.”
Assistant Attorney General Patrick DeAlmeida, who argued the case on behalf of the state, said that if the casinos won judicial approval to stay open, other private parties would also seek such relief.
“Casinos are not alone here in feeling economic harm,” DeAlmeida argued.
Casino association lawyer John Kearney said the casinos were trying to figure out their next step.
The decision means that while casino restaurants, shops, bars and entertainment venues will remain open, gridlocked state budget negotiations will do what not even past hurricanes or blizzards could — bring gambling to a halt.
Casino officials weren’t immediately available for comment regarding their gaming shutdown plans.
However, the casinos, DGE and state Casino Control Commission have already discussed stop-gaming scenarios.
Auriemma said that getting people off the gaming floors should be easier at 8 a.m. than at most other times of the day because crowds are not at their largest.
Each casino can decide how to get people off the floor, he said. Part of that might involve an announcement to customers, he said.
Casinos may decide to cordon off sections of the gaming floor as the overnight crowd begins to thin out, Auriemma said. It’s possible that gaming at some casinos will end before 8 a.m., he said.
Once customers are off the gaming floor, the casinos will have several hours of accounting that must be done, he said.
The casinos will also have to figure out a way of keeping customers out of gaming areas, Auriemma said.
That could present a challenge for some casinos that have bars and restaurants on their gaming floors, he said. Casinos could close those bars and restaurants, he said, or create some kind of secured path through the gaming floor so customers can reach their destinations.
Auriemma said it’s clear that casino officials aren’t happy with the situation.
However, he also said that discussions regarding the gaming shutdown have been professional and cordial despite the court challenges to the closure.
“We work with them every day,” Auriemma said. “They work with us.”
“We didn’t expect them to sit idly by without challenging the issue. That’s their right.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.

To e-mail Thomas Barlas at The Press:
TBarlas@pressofac.com