CALIFORNIA IS MISSING AN OPPORTUNITY GAMBLING TAX COULD AID BUDGET.

Byline: Joe Honig Local View

COLLEGE tuitions, construction projects and quality-of-life programs face a razor-sharp guillotine as a $21 billion deficit makes California's budgetary future a dicey proposition.

Regrettably, though, when it comes to wringing cash from modern-day casino gambling, our governor and legislature are reluctant players afraid to take a gamble. This while unlikely trend-setters such as Mississippi, Iowa and that pleasure palace known as Detroit shore up tax bases and human needs with rolls of the dice.

Almost 25 years ago New Jersey broke Nevada's stranglehold on legal casinos. And, no, the Garden State didn't fall apart. Education funds soared and struggling seniors embraced steep, subsidized discounts on costly prescriptions.

Critics of Atlantic City betting, those fearing mob choke-holds and paralyzing corruption, are rarely heard from. Contemporary casinos take orders from Wall Street, not Little Italy.

Yes, California has allowed some Indian tribes to run isolated, out-of- the-way casinos on sovereign lands. But unlike 11 of 24 states doing so, Sacramento doesn't tax tribal gambling; our Indian casinos pay relatively small license fees on slot machines and other devices of chance.

Did we make a bad deal on Indian gambling? You be the judge. Connecticut scores up to $80 million a year from tribal casinos. California collects no sales or other taxes on reservations, and some analysts contend dollars bet with tribes stimulate our economy far less than private-sector spending.

So in a state sanctioning extravagant card rooms, racing and a scandal- plagued lottery, it seems strangely out of character for our great cities to be without gambling meccas.

Do Californians fear the wages of win? Who's kidding whom? We live in a state where public nudity and X-rated entertainment were born. Are we simply antigambling? Nevada casinos win some $10 billion a year, much of it from jinxed Golden Staters. (Fact is, Las Vegas would still be a desert stopover were it not for California. Big-time casinos need nearby population centers. At its creation, Vegas was Mayberry with sand.)

This is not to say Nevada's gambling moguls are strangers here. They've spent millions lobbying legislators and voters to keep private casinos out of California, saving the spoils of chance for Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe. And gangster films to the contrary, these are not unsophisticated, impulsive, strong-arm types. The face of corporate gambling is more Donald Trump than Tony Soprano.

Yet here we sit, billions in the red, on the verge of crowding our classrooms and hiking taxes without a windfall in sight. Meanwhile, they are doubling down in New Orleans and betting black or red in Michigan.

Some deal. Especially when one looks to New York, another giant that paid the price when state-sanctioned gambling moved next door. For New Yorkers crowd New Jersey and Connecticut casinos like ravenous wedding guests at a splendid buffet. Soon the Empire State will shorten their commute - Catskill Mountain betting will take the place of failed, shuttered resort hotels.

You'd think California would have wised up. You'd think investors from Monte Carlo to Macao might eagerly part with millions to win billions at land's end. To make California something of a winner, too.

At the moment, though, the only safe bet is that most of us, certainly the least of us, will eventually be gasping in a torrent of red ink.

While drinks are poured and pairs are split and public spending is buoyed just a couple of hundred miles away.