Texas Wants Slot Machines to Fund Education

The Texas Gaming Association thinks that they have a good plan to help education in Texas, and it involves slot machines. They want to merge resort casinos, slot machines at racetracks, and legalized gambling at the Indian Reservations to create a college tuition fund. They say that the three gaming groups have been competing for different things and thus dividing support for gaming, and if they use the estimated $1.6 billion in slot machine revenue for the fund, everyone would win instead.

Lawmakers have solved the problem of college education for this year, but without something like the slot machine revenue, what will they do next year? Gambling supporters think that if they use the slot machine revenue it is a win-win situation. Residents would get to play the slot machines and students would get to go to college – all off of some excess revenue.

But even with all of the support that the group has to get the slot machines unified, they are still getting a lot of resistance from groups that don’t want to see expanded gambling. Opponents of the slot machines such as Suzii Paynter, Director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas' Christian Life Commission, says it is a mistake to try and mix slot machines with education as it is not a dependable source of revenue. "It would be a terrible mistake and a trick on families to say to them that money that's made in an undependable revenue stream ... would be worthy of funding something as important as higher education," she said.

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