Sparks Says Supreme Court Plays Politics
November 14th, 2009by Glynn Wilson
Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks, the leading candidate in the Democratic Party’s race for governor of Alabama in 2010, blasted the state’s conservative Supreme Court on Saturday for playing politics with the gambling issue
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday to strike down a preliminary injunction that kept the Gov. Bob Riley’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling from conducting another raid of White Hall Resort and Entertainment Center.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday indicates the urgency of the platform I’ve put forward, ” Sparks said in a press release. “This ruling puts at jeopardy an industry that brings hundreds of millions of dollars to both state and local governments in Alabama.”
The people of Alabama are currently financing the services of governments in surrounding states, Sparks said.
“The Supreme Court ruling does nothing but continue to play politics with one of the most urgent issues facing our state,” he said. “As governor, I will push for statewide regulation, local referendum to determine if gaming will be allowed, and taxation of gaming to provide funding for both education and Medicaid.”
The governor’s task force raided the White Hall gambling center in March and seized 105 gambling machines. The charitable organization that operates the facility, Cornerstone Community Outreach, argued that the machines were legal electronic bingo games and got a preliminary injunction against future raids.
The Supreme Court reversed the preliminary injunction, according to news reports. The court’s majority said Cornerstone did not have a reasonable likelihood of proving that the seized games constituted the game of bingo.
Critics of the court often refer to it as the “Exxon Eight,” since out of nine justices on the court, eight of them are conservative Republicans elected with the help of disgraced former Bush political aide Karl Rove. Their most famous ruling reduced a lower court’s ruling penalizing the oil giant Exxon Mobile for bilking the taxpayers of Alabama out of millions of dollars in oil and gas royalties from wells along the state’s coast in the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay.
