Aug 17, 2017 3 min read

For the past decade, municipalities within Washington County, the county itself and nongovernmental organizations have come to depend on a competitive process to obtain a local share of gambling revenues generated at The Meadows Racetrack & Casino.

A ruling by the state Supreme Court last year opened a can of worms by declaring unconstitutional the state’s casino revenue-sharing process. But this week, a representative of the gaming and harness racing complex in North Strabane Township publicly reassured officials it plans to maintain its contributions, which totaled in the millions.

Troy Stremming, executive vice president for government relations and public affairs at Pinnacle Entertainment, owner and operator of The Meadows, said under a memorandum of understanding, the gaming entity will continue to make payments into the Local Share Account “under the exact same structure and formula that existed” under the law that legalized gambling in Pennsylvania in 2004.

Slot-machine gambling was implemented at The Meadows three years later, and the committee associated with the Local Share Account instituted a series of public hearings in 2008 to air ideas on how to allocate the money. It’s up to the county commissioners to forward a list of proposed projects to the state Department of Community and Economic Development, which gives the final approval.

Stremming did not know until Thursday’s county commissioners meeting that he would be sharing the agenda with a member of the Union Township board of supervisors, who thanked those who deal with the local share of casino gambling revenue for $150,000 dedicated to replacing both the Jack Street and Jason Drive bridges, which span an unnamed tributary of Peters Creek just north of Finleyville.

“In light of the recent flooding issues that our township has undergone, the timing is unimaginable,” said Supervisor Heather Daerr. “Our township infrastructure is old, and it’s failing. This is desperately needed.”

The project was approved about two years ago after a presentation by Supervisor Larry Spahr and engineer Carl DeiCas, and Slusarczyk Excavating and Landscaping Supply of West Brownsville was awarded a $149,576 contract for bridge replacement, which is to be completed by the end of October.

Kerry Fox, community development specialist with the Washington County Redevelopment Authority, which administers the local share program, has handled the Union Township project, but he also is a neighbor of the casino complex.

“I also want to tell Pinnacle you make it very nice to live in North Strabane Township,” he told Stremming, who attended a supervisors meeting this week to let them know, as leaders of the host community, that Pinnacle won’t be leaving them high and dry.

Stremming pledged to continue to work with the state Legislature toward more permanent solutions, and state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Carroll, who was on hand for the presentations, said afterward, “The LSA ‘fix’ has been bundled with additional gaming, and that has been a debate and bone of contention in the Legislature.”

A proposed tax on video gaming terminals and reopening the gaming act, plus Bartolotta’s proposal to open satellite casinos, are vying with each other. The state Senate is not now in session, but members are on a six-hour callback.

“There was no gaming bill included from the Senate to the House,” Bartolotta said. “We’ll see what the House does. They still have the budget to negotiate, and when they come back in, when they reconvene and they vote on it, and they give it back to us, we’ll see where they stand on this.”