California Gambling Control Commission

A long-simmering battle over a casino in Los Angeles County's tiniest city has reached a critical phase as the state Gambling Control Commission weighs whether to grant the card club's controversial owner, Dr. Irving I. Moskowitz, a permanent gaming license. Moskowitz, a reclusive Miami Beach multimillionaire, runs a gaming empire in the one-square-mile city of Hawaiian Gardens. He bankrolls local charities, and his gambling revenues help keep the city solvent.

The new chairman of California's Gambling Control Commission expressed an aversion to gambling Thursday, and called for clearer authority to audit and inspect fast-expanding Indian casinos. Burks "Dean" Shelton, selected by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to head the commission, said he believes the state has the authority to "yank their licenses for those slot machines" if, for example, the casinos are found to be cheating.

Public policy analysts on Friday condemned a proposal that Gov. Gray Davis made behind closed doors to give Indian tribes the right to choose two members of the commission that regulates tribal gambling in California. "It's beyond the perception of impropriety," said Bill Thompson, a professor of public administration at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and author of "Gambling in America: An Encyclopedia." "It's 'You vote for me, you give me money and support; I give you this.' It's wrong.

With the clock ticking on the Davis administration, the governor's office is offering last-minute concessions to the state's powerful casino tribes by moving to change the balance of the gambling control commission and oust its top legal advisor, according to the commission chairman.

Members of the California Gambling Control Commission indicated Monday that they favor legislation that would allow the state to regulate charitable bingo games. Organizations that hold bingo games are licensed by city and county governments, but a measure by Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) would transfer that responsibility to the state's recently formed Gambling Control Commission. California, Polanco said, is one of only six states that does not regulate bingo.

Gambling regulators have canceled today's much-ballyhooed deadline for Native American casinos to install hundreds of lucrative slot machines--a deadline they say never existed but developed out of confusion over California's new casino gambling compact. The decision by the California Gambling Commission, announced in a letter Monday, was eyed warily by Native American leaders who question whether the agency even has the right to control slot machine licenses.

Gov. Gray Davis' nominee to head the newly formed Gambling Control Commission narrowly won support Monday from a key Senate committee, despite opposition from the head of one of the state's most politically influential casino-operating Indian tribes. Three Democrats on the Senate Rules Committee voted to approve the nomination of John Hensley to be chairman of the gambling commission, a $114,000-a-year post. Two Republicans on the five-member committee abstained, citing opposition by Mark A.

Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday appointed four members to the state Gambling Control Commission, a new body with wide-ranging authority over California's multibillion-dollar card club industry and some jurisdiction over Indian casinos. The appointees are John E. Hensley, 57, of Los Angeles; Arlo Smith, 72, of San Francisco; Michael C. Palmer, 51, of Los Angeles; and J.K. Sasaki, 51, of San Francisco. Hensley will chair the commission, which was born out of legislation by state Atty. Gen.