Mayor Street has vetoed plans for a ballot question aimed at derailing the city’s two planned slots parlors, and City Council on Thursday morning promptly overrode that veto.
The mayor vetoed the idea of asking voters in May to approve zoning changes that would ban casinos from virtually every neighborhood in the city. [...]
But City Council overrode the mayor’s veto by a 17-0 vote.

We’ve been a little lax on our casino coverage lately, so let’s catch up a bit, shall we? Yesterday, there was a bit of a bombshell when the folks at CasinoFreePhiladelphia discovered a law on the books from 2002 that would theoretically prevent any casinos from being built on Delaware Ave. The law, ironically, was passed a few years back to stop Delaware Ave. from sucking, and hey, it still works. But will it? Since even mayoral candidates are in the business of having laws re-written for them, the Mayor hisself could probably get a pesky lil’ law like this thrown off the books, especially if it would help him TO FUCK UP THE CITY MORE. (Sorry, as this issue drags out alongside Street’s last days in office, it gets harder and harder not to spit blood every time John Street exerts authority.) But the Mayor’s got a problem now: Since all of City Council now pretty much realizes that they will never get re-elected if any of these shitboxes go up, very quickly the casino debate is turning into The Mayor vs. Anyone With A Goddamn Brain In His/Her Head. Thus, it’s Street that has to go and try and veto the anti-casino question that will be on the ballot this May. And boy, is there egg on his face today. Street’s reasoning for shooting the ballot question down is that, if Philadelphians vote to more or less ban casinos in total, then Harrisburg will come in, take the deciding power away from the City of Philadelphia, and basically force the casinos on us. While this could very well happen, it’s a lot less likely to if we have a mayor in office who’s not a complete fucking numbskull and is capable of standing our ground out in Pennsyltucky. In other words: Shut the fuck up, dude, and let us all try and kill this awful mess that you had a major hand in creating. And before you respond, please remind yourself: At this point, you have no choice.
KYW: DENIED
TheClog: Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 1:23 pm.