It is just after 9 on a sweltering Tuesday morning in July, and already dozens of cars and trucks fill the spaces in the corner of a parking lot in Toledo's Westgate area.
Another 30 minutes will go by before the two luxury motor coaches rumble into the lot in a huge arc, careful to avoid the nearly 100 people who run from their air-conditioned vehicles to form two makeshift boarding lines.
Fortunately, there are enough seats on both buses today for everyone, including those who didn't make a reservation.
Like huge school districts, casinos in Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, send dozens of buses fanning out to the cities and towns of Ohio each day. Thousands of people are picked up and delivered along with their money across the state line to places where the only lesson taught is that the house - and the state - always wins.
Ralph Brock and his wife, Ella, started what was a vacation day from Mr. Brock's job at Campbell Soup by climbing onto a bus in Napoleon at 5:45 a.m. bound for Detroit. They won't get back to Napoleon until after 8 p.m.
“I love coming here,” Mr. Brock said as he sat in front of a quarter slot machine at Greektown Casino. “But to me, I think Ohio is letting millions of dollars a year go by to come across the state line to Detroit.”
A state committee charged by the Ohio General Assembly to study the impact of gambling in Ohio concluded in a report released last week that more than $1 of every $10 Buckeye bettors wagered was spent in casinos or at racetracks in three neighboring states: Michigan, Indiana, and West Virginia.
The committee, using information from 1999, estimates that Ohioans bet between $20 and $22 billion annually, including $2.7 billion wagered just across Ohio's borders.
Meanwhile, revenues from legal in-state gaming - such as the Ohio Lottery and horse racing - are falling, as are the proceeds that those forms of betting dump each year into Ohio's coffers.
But the buses, and the bettors they carry, keep rolling along.
“Everything happens on the bus,” extolled a 65-year-old Fulton County farmer who said he had spent one day a week for two months straight catching the bus from Westgate to the Greektown Casino in Detroit.
“I've gambled my whole life,” the man said, asking that he not be identified because he told his wife he was somewhere else. Some days he wins at the blackjack tables in Detroit, most days he loses.
“Sometimes when I go and get tired of gambling, I just walk around and watch the people,” the farmer said. “You've got people walking around the casino on oxygen and with walkers - I mean they're two breaths away from death and they're pulling the lever on a machine!”
The three “temporary” casinos in downtown Detroit began opening in 1999 with much fanfare and promises that they would soon be replaced by bigger, permanent facilities along the riverfront.
There have been delays in reaching deals for permanent, replacement casinos with 400-room adjoining hotels. Detroit City Council and the casino owners have until the end of this month to finalize the terms of their agreements, or to approve another extension.
One pair of women on the bus from Toledo this day pulled off an elaborate deception to get their gambling fix. The longtime friends said they told their respective husbands that they were spending the day shopping in Toledo because their spouses “wouldn't approve” of their dropping $220 at a Detroit casino.
They are not compulsive gamblers, the two women declare, even though they fill their vehicles with packages purchased at other times during the week to convince their husbands that their day has been spent in Toledo stores instead of in front of a Detroit slot machine.
“We've been doing this for a couple of years,” one of the women says matter-of-factly. “We drive up or take the bus about once a month - or more during the summer.”
In 1996, voters in Ohio and Michigan chose different paths when the question of casinos was put before them.
Voters in the Wolverine state that year approved a ballot initiative to allow construction of three casinos in Detroit as a way to revitalize the Motor City's downtown.
At the time, Michigan residents and political leaders were watching helplessly as millions of dollars were wagered - and lost - at a newly opened “temporary” casino across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ont.
They were equally as helpless to stop the flow of potential tax dollars being spent in one of several casinos operated by Native American tribes in Michigan communities like Mount Pleasant and St. Ignace.
Meanwhile, south of the state line, voters in Ohio overwhelmingly rejected a ballot initiative that would have allowed construction of as many as eight riverboat gambling operations near Cleveland, Youngstown, Lorain, and Cincinnati. It was the second time in six years that voters had rejected such a measure.
Nearly seven years later, the results of those respective decisions are a simple matter of numbers. In 2001, more than $1 billion was bet in the three Detroit casinos, and about $81.5 million from those wagers ended up in state coffers, not including things like income taxes and other ancillary economic benefits.
In testimony to the Michigan legislature earlier this year, Nelson Westrin, executive director of the Michigan Gaming Control Board, said the three Detroit casinos pay $267 million in payroll wages each year and spend $196 million contracting with suppliers and other businesses. The three casinos employ about 7,900 people in mostly UAW-represented jobs.
Michigan's general fund totaled about $737 million in revenues in 2001 as a direct result of gaming, either in casinos, at horse racing tracks, or in the lottery, which made up the bulk of that figure.
In Ohio, which has no casinos, that number was $653 million, with the state lottery accounting for about 97 percent of the revenue. Still, despite the lure of increased money flowing into a tight state budget, the members of the legislative committee, Ohio religious leaders, and most elected officials in Columbus remain opposed to allowing casinos in Ohio.
“The majority of this Committee feels that casinos would have more costs and, on balance, fewer benefits than [installing video lottery terminals] at racetracks,” the report concludes. “The only advantage of casinos over the other alternatives would be slightly higher revenues to the State treasury, which the majority feels would come at an unacceptable cost.”
Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell agrees, arguing that depending on revenues from gambling as a government funding stream is unreliable and irresponsible.
“I think it's bad public and fiscal policy to tie your economic development hopes to a revenue stream whose impact has questionable social consequences,” Mr. Blackwell said. “In order to sustain that flow, you have to have poor people risk family income, and that's just bad public and fiscal policy.”
Not all of Ohio's cross-border gambling traffic goes to Michigan, of course. Casinos are within easy driving distance in neighboring Indiana and video game-style slot machines at horse racing tracks in West Virginia. But state officials said the majority of gambling dollars flowing to neighboring states heads north.
It is no secret, of course, that Michigan's 17 casinos and their counterparts in Ontario sing a siren song south of the border to lure prospective players to their respective venues.
Any motorist traveling Ohio's highways can attest to the litany of billboards promising easy money for those willing to head north to try their luck. Casino Windsor, Greektown, Motor City, and MGM Detroit all admit that they try hard to attract clients from Ohio, using gimmicks like automobile giveaways, rewards for frequent patrons, and complimentary meals to get clients through the doors.
But just how much those three casinos in Detroit - and their older cousin across the river in Windsor - count on Ohioans to pay the bills is a tightly guarded secret.
“The vast majority of our guests are from Michigan, but we draw a number of guests from Ohio as well,” said Yvette Monet, a spokeswoman for MGM Casino Detroit. Ms. Monet said while the individual casinos in Detroit try to track where their guests come from each day, the information is proprietary in nature because the casinos heavily compete against each other for business.
Jim Monday, a spokesman for Casino Windsor, said the province-owned gaming house tracks its customers closely to determine where they come from. However, “Asking for that information is like asking Coke for the recipe.”
Still, Mr. Monday said, Ontario, Michigan, and Ohio are Casino Windsor's top three markets, and the Canadian casino hosts several busloads of Ohioans each day along with the hundreds of people brave enough to cross the border in their own vehicles for a chance at tax-free winnings.
Toledo health-store owner Jalmer Roe is a self-confessed “regular” to casinos in Detroit and Windsor, going two or three times a week either on the bus or by car to try his luck at the tables and slot machines. He said he measures his gambling budget in the thousands of dollars, but views the trips north as more of a distraction than feeding any addiction.
With money in his pocket, Mr. Roe said he feels safe and secure in Detroit's casinos “because of the amount of money they spend on security.”
Although he travels on gambling junkets to Las Vegas regularly, Mr. Roe said he would rather his gaming dollars stayed in his home state. He dismisses politicians who assume that crime and corruption naturally follow casinos, wherever they appear.
“I think it's wrong, all the money going up here. Look at the average age of the people [going to casinos]. They're enjoying their retirement,” Mr. Roe said. “They're not out spending money they don't have.”
At 73, Adeline Kunaszewski of LaGrange, Ohio, is what casino officials would consider a near-perfect customer: dedicated enough to spend six hours on a bus to and from suburban Cleveland just for the “opportunity” to drop coins into a slot machine.
“If I go home with enough money for a cup of coffee, I'm happy,” Mrs. Kunaszewski said. “I like it up here. It's a good way to get away from the regular daily routine.”
First Published July 14, 2002, 10:39 p.m.
