Iowa might become the first state to seize casino jackpots in excess of $10,000 from deadbeat Iowans who owe back taxes, child support or other public debts. Or not.
Missouri officials came up with the same idea in 1997. Four years and much study later, it was shelved as unworkable, not cost effective and maybe illegal to boot in the face of thorny privacy issues and the complexity of the computer interfaces.
“You could see the same thing happen here,” Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission Administrator Jack Ketterer said in an interview Tuesday.
Iowa’s law is to take effect July 1, but “the state will not be ready,” said Ketterer. He said officials are hopeful of a September launch of the necessary technical systems that would interface state and casino data banks.
Meanwhile Iowa gaming commissioners this week took the first steps toward expansion of the state’s casino gambling industry.
There’s a huge difference in Iowa’s approach to expansion and Missouri’s, however.
Iowa officials on Monday issued a formal request for proposals to study that state’s gaming marketplace and determine “if there were any remaining underserved markets or markets currently served that were underperforming.” Iowa has 14 riverboat casinos, three racetrack racinos and three tribal casinos.
Missouri has 13 casinos (including one under construction near St. Louis) with nine of them slugging it out in the state’s two largest urban markets. The St. Louis market also includes two Illinois riverboat casinos.
The Kansas City market has four riverboats, a small tribal casino in neighboring Kansas City, Kan., and the likelihood of a racino at The Woodlands and a resort casino near Kansas Speedway within the next two years or so.
Riverboat gambling revenues here have flattened in recent years. Now looming competition in Kansas and the possibility of Missouri smoking bans threaten market share losses the likes of which casinos here have never experienced.

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