New chairman outlines goals for Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board

The new chairman of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said he will do everything he can to restore public confidence in the state's chief casino regulatory agency, which is often buffeted by criticism from anti-gambling lawmakers and was slammed by a grand jury report.

Bill Ryan also told a state House of Representatives panel that he supports moving casino enforcement investigators out of the gaming board and under the state attorney general's office, a move long sought by some House Republicans. However, he said he opposes a bill that would implement a grand jury recommendation by barring the seven gaming board members from deliberating in private over casino applications.

During the hearing, Ryan did not dispute a Democratic lawmaker's assertion that the public views the agency as lacking integrity and having rigged the outcome of casino license applications. "I guarantee you that I am going to do everything I can to make sure that that perception is one that's changed," he responded. "I hope sooner, but certainly in the not-too-distant future."

Ryan was a longtime senior prosecutor in the attorney general's office before he was picked in August by his former boss, Republican Governor Tom Corbett, to lead the gaming board.

The gaming board was created in 2004 and is tasked with regulating and licensing Pennsylvania's 5-year-old casino industry. It has licensed 12 casinos, including six at horse-racing tracks. Ten of those casinos are open, and the gaming board has the legal authority to award two more licenses.

It was during Ryan's term as acting attorney general in May that the office issued a scathing, 102-page grand jury report that recounted the political calculations necessary to legalize casino-style gambling in 2004, criticized the gaming board's use of secret meetings and suggested the agency awarded licenses to unsuitable applicants in 2006.

It also suggested how the gaming board could change to better serve the public interest, rather than those of casino operators and applicants. The grand jury probe began in 2009 when Corbett was attorney general. It has not led to any criminal charges, and the grand jury's report did not recommend charges. The office will not say whether the investigation is continuing.

Ryan, however, distanced the current board members from the grand jury's report, noting that none of them served during the period studied by the grand jury and saying that he believes they are committed to working to regain public confidence in the agency. Three board members are appointed by the governor, and one each by the House and Senate leaders of both parties.

Ryan said he would support a move to shift the agency's Bureau of Investigations and Enforcement, or BIE, to the attorney general's office. The bureau is supposed to be independent of the board, but Ryan said it makes for a poor management structure and blurs the board's role of judge and the bureau's role as investigators.

"We have a unit, a group out there basically that is unresponsible and unaccountable to anyone, and that's probably the most important reason (to move it), besides making sure we don't have this melding of roles between the judge and the investigator," Ryan told lawmakers. "If BIE goes into the Office of Attorney General, the attorney general becomes clearly, 100 percent responsible for BIE."

The grand jury had recommended establishing the BIE as an independent law enforcement agency. It also recommended barring gaming board members from deliberating in private over casino applications, and bill is pending in the House to accomplish that.

However, Ryan said that cloak of privacy is something all other gambling states allow and is necessary for a free and frank exchange of opinions between the board members, although he acknowledged that the grand jury report can leave the impression that the gaming board held private discussions that should have been in public.

"There comes a point where you have to trust the quality of the people doing the work and doing the judging," Ryan said. But without the ability to deliberate in private, he said, "I think the system will fail."